February 3, 2008
Zimbabwe 2008: The election whose outcome is predetermined
Zimbabwe finds itself at the crossroads and the bank created at independence in 1980 of justice, freedom and equality seems to be bankrupt and it is evident that the promissory note that was given to citizens at independence will not be honored on March 29.
A central bank should ordinarily represent a repository of trust and integrity but the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has been reduced to a theatre of games and machinations while the nation is at its knees groping for solutions and desperate for direction and answers.
At last week’s announcement of the monetary policy statement, Dr. Gono has this to say: "We have chosen a low-key presentation of this monetary policy statement for strategic reasons while we prepare for a comprehensive post-elections policy program.’’
Read more...
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February 3, 2008
Cash Barons – Flatwater Revisited
A case has been made that Zimbabwe is under siege and, therefore, the end should justify the means. In about 56 days, Zimbabweans will be faced with a choice about who should shape their future and they will have to think seriously about the role of state institutions in undermining or promoting their collective interests.
The RBZ has boldly asserted that it has been forced to go beyond its mandate because of extraordinary conditions prevailing in the economy. It is has been pointed out that the actions of the Western countries combined with the nefarious activities of unscrupulous business and political actors have created the economic mess.
Read more...
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January 28, 2008
Zimbabwe 2008: The triumph of the politics of fear
It is now a reality that the harmonised polls will be held on 29 March 2008.
Only last year this time, the conventional wisdom in many opposition circles was that President Mugabe would not secure the mandate of his party as a candidate when his term expired let alone him being democratically endorsed as candidate of the party for the 2008 elections.
Many experts advanced the notion that Mugabe would not last the year as the head of state and ZANU-PF will disintegrate into tribal factions. A combination of internal party contradictions and confusion was meant to facilitate the exit of Mugabe from the political scene.
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January 24, 2008
Obama v Clinton/Clinton and lessons for Africa
Both Senators Obama and Hillary Clinton are democratic Presidential nominees and their emergence as the front runners of their party represents a historic and defining moment in American history.
Since the founding of the republic, the White House has been the exclusive preserve of white males and the thought of an African American and a White Female, albeit a former first lady, being prospective custodians of American values, interests and way of life was certainly not in the minds of the founding fathers of the USA.
The intersection of race and gender in American political life and its dominance in the 2008 elections has to be understood in a broader context of the evolution of the country’s democratic order and the consequences of the civil rights and women suffrage movements.
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January 21, 2008
Africa 2008: Citizens, Money and Power in Africa
There are many big questions that should inform African conversations but regrettably we are all guilty of small talk in respect of some key and fundamental issues that have to be addressed if Africa is to advance its cause.
The role of citizens, money and power relationships in shaping Africa’s destiny have to form part of the great debates between and amongst us. Who does Africa belong to? What are the obligations of African citizenship? What should be the role of the state in a developmental state? These are some of the questions that come to my mind in the quietness of my time when occassionally I reflect on the African condition and the seemingly helpless state of affairs that my continent of birth finds itsef in. After more than fifty years of trying and US$600 billion worth of aid, the frontiers of poverty have not been reduced in the continent.
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January 17, 2008
Africa 2008: Citizens and Power – The Zimbabwean Case Study
Political power in any democratic and constitutional order is held by the holders of sovereignty. It is true that without following a principle of containing and balancing legislative, executive, and judiciary powers, there can be no freedom and no protection against the abuse of power. The separation of power principle between the three branches of the state is so fundamental to the protection of any constitutional order. It is generally agreed that any atmosphere where any of the branches of the state can operate with excessive limitation from others and one branch can rule out the decisions of the other branches necessarily undermines the principle of sovereignty and the rule of law. Africa is a challenged continent in so far as locating political power in the context of the wishes and aspirations of citizens.
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January 13, 2008
Obama’s audacity of hope and lessons for Africa
After two primaries, Obama has won 16 delegates compared to Senator Clinton’s 9. The results of the New Hampshire primary have demonstrated the resilience of Obama and underlying the hype following the elections is the undeniable fact that Clinton and Obama ended up in New Hampshire with the same number of delegates i.e. 9 each making it a draw.
Even if Obama may not make it as the candidate, the politics of America will never be the same.
What Obama represents to America and to all global citizens who are trapped in seemingly hopeless situations is already evident in the courage and determination of the marginalised to invest in meaningful change politics.
When Barack Obama stepped up to the podium at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, few in the world let alone outside his home state knew anything about him. His place in American history is not only secure but inspirational. His message is so basic and compelling. It captures the imagination of anyone who cares about life and the importance of positive activism.
Obama has entered national politics at a defining moment in American history when the names of both the incumbent President and his deputy are not on the ballot box
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January 13, 2008
If Zuma & Shaik are guilty, who is innocent?
The relationship between the petty bourgeoisie and political elites in a post colonial state is a subject that requires critical interrogation not only because it informs the kind of democratic order and political morality that is necessary to push back the frontiers of poverty itself largely a legacy of the colonial state. The end of apartheid in South Africa ushered a new era in which political power was transferred to the majority of the citizens through their elected representatives. Republicanism formed a foundational basis of the post apartheid state underpinned by a government of laws and not of men.
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December 30, 2007
Be the change that you want to see
NO SOCIETY can ever be greater than the sum of the actions of its citizens. The end of each calendar year is like a birthday of a natural person that provides an opportunity to take stock and reflect on past achievements and challenges of the future.
Indeed, when we say many happy returns, we are celebrating life and its renewal because, like water, life makes a difference that cannot be reduced to any monetary value. The quality of life of any people is causally linked to human action and not inaction. It would be unreasonable to wish many happy returns to a dead person or a person who makes no difference to the lives of people.
Hope and faith is all we have as mortal beings, but in both, possibilities and opportunities exist to advance the cause of human civilisation in a manner that defines history and leaves a legacy for future generations.
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December 24, 2007
The paradox of African liberation and change
IN 1994, South Africa became the youngest African country that was born from the womb of apartheid and its foundational constitutional order was uniquely informed by not only the experiences of other post-colonial African states but other nations outside the continent.
The deracialisation of South Africa was a costly project principally because the stakes were high and the settler community had invested in making the country an extension of Europe with its own race-based constitutional order underpinned by a balkanisation concept. Blacks were apportioned their own land under the apartheid structure where they were presumed to be free, notwithstanding the unfair resource allocation.
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December 19, 2007
Zimbabwe and the Jacob Zuma factor
AS SOUTH Africa and indeed President Thabo Mbeki digests and reflects on Jacob Zuma’s victory as the president of Africa’s oldest political party, the African National Congress (ANC), there is no doubt that the political actors in Zimbabwe are also challenged by the implications of a Zuma presidency underpinned by strong support by President Mugabe’s strongest and most vocal critics i.e. COSATU and the SACP.
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December 17, 2007
The EU-Africa relationship post-colonialism
THE controversial EU-Africa summit is now history but will forever be remembered for the Brown-Mugabe debacle that at the safe signified an attempt by former colonies to negotiate a new and just post-colonial engagement with former colonial masters.
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December 10, 2007
Beyond Lisbon: setting the African agenda
THE EU-Africa summit held in Lisbon last weekend has come and gone but Africa’s challenges will remain.
For the first time, Africa came to Europe as a united block specifically more on the Zimbabwean issue than on the key issues on the agenda of the summit. The Zimbabwean stand-off that has prevented the indaba from taking place for seven years has its own historical significance and provided an opportunity for Africa to take the values debate head on with its former colonial masters.
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December 03, 2007
Implications of Zuma winning ANC leadership race
THE colonial state was founded on the notion that natives could not be trusted with the vote and, therefore, they had to be excluded from governance issues. The value system that underpinned the colonial state informed the constitutional order of the day.
The role of the colonial state was to promote, protect and sustain the hegemony of the settler community. At the core of the colonial state was the need to commodify native labour and this was achieved by systematically alienating natives from economic resources.
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November 27, 2007
Africa's enduring economic apartheid
APARTHEID is a social and political system of racial segregation and discrimination that was popularised and institutionalised by white minority governments in South Africa for a 46 year period from 1948 through 1994.
The term apartheid (from the Afrikaans word for “apartness”) was introduced in the human vocabulary in the 1930s and used as a political slogan of the National Party in the early 1940s, but the philosophy underpinning it was an integral part of the colonial South African experience that dated from 1652. In 1948, apartheid was institutionalised and supported by a complex legal and economic system that stratified citizens along racial lines.
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November 18, 2007
Does indigenisation threaten law of succession?
THE political destiny of Africa is now notionally in the hands of the natives in all of its states while the key economic decisions about Africa’s future continue to be made by non-Africans notwithstanding the last five decades of uhuru.
The democratisation of Africa’s economic space is the enduring challenge that confronts the continent with equal measure, irrespective of the stage of economic development of the individual states.
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November 11, 2007
Defining the role of the state in post-colonial Africa
THE purpose of this article is to assess the role of the state in light of the last 50 years of post-colonial experiences.
The extent of the state’s role in the transformation and development of Africa continues to be debated particularly in light of the unorthodox institutional arrangements that seem to have facilitated economic development in the East Asian economies. Post colonial African politics have been heavily shaped by controversies over the role, size and strength of the state.
What is the role of the state in post-colonial Africa?
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November 05, 2007
Mushore's ordeal and the New Zimbabwe we want
JAMES Mushore, one of three professionals who founded the first merchant bank controlled and managed by blacks in Zimbabwe, the National Merchant Bank of Zimbabwe (NMB), made history in 2004 when like the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo, he fled to the former colonial power, England, for fear of his life in post colonial Zimbabwe.
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Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Zimbabwe 2008: The election whose outcome is predetermined
Zimbabwe finds itself at the crossroads and the bank created at independence in 1980 of justice, freedom and equality seems to be bankrupt and it is evident that the promissory note that was given to citizens at independence will not be honored on March 29.
A central bank should ordinarily represent a repository of trust and integrity but the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has been reduced to a theatre of games and machinations while the nation is at its knees groping for solutions and desperate for direction and answers.
At last week’s announcement of the monetary policy statement, Dr. Gono has this to say: "We have chosen a low-key presentation of this monetary policy statement for strategic reasons while we prepare for a comprehensive post-elections policy program.’’ He also made startling revelation that the RBZ would come up with a post-elections monetary policy blueprint that will cover a 24-month recovery programme stretching from May 2008 through to April 2010.It appears that Gono already knows the outcome of the general elections otherwise he would have been cautious instead of preempting the actions of a new administration particularly given that this landmark election will involve Presidential, Parliamentary and local choices. It appears that Gono has already discounted the possibility of any other outcome than the victory of ZANU-PF.
In line with his belief that ZANU-PF will win the election, Gono said that the post election programme will focus on, among other things, the removal of pricing distortions in such areas as fuel, agricultural inputs and outputs, multiple interest and exchange rates, electricity, water and other municipal and parastatal service charges. Does this not sound familiar? Is it not the same Gono who said failure is not an option? Why would citizens of Zimbabwe place their trust on him after the elections? If these policies makes sense now what defer them to the post election period? Is it the change that Zimbabweans should vote for on 29 March 2008?He also said that the government will also look at the subsidies policy with a view to scrapping untargeted general subsidies, amend investment laws, and boost productivity through incentives for key sectors — agriculture, mining, tourism and manufacturing.The Governor who is increasingly assuming the role of an unelected President had no kind words for Government ministries, local authorities, parastatals and some sections of the business community which he alleged have over the years failed to take heed of policy advice and warnings from the central bank as if to suggest that these state institutions are now accountable to him. Under what constitutional order would a Governor of the central bank make such statements? It can only be when a democratic order has been irretrievably broken. It is important for citizens to record all the words of Gono because they help in exposing the extent of the breakdown of the rule of law and the collapse of the state. As is now characteristic of Gono, he spared no effort to lament the impact of the sanctions imposed on the country by the European Union, the United States and their allies, saying there were "considerable attempts being made to dismantle Zimbabwe’s economic fabric through a combination of armory". He was also reported to have said: "The subtle nature of some of these sanctions has regrettably escaped the eyes of some stakeholders here at home and many others in the world community who, instead, are interpreting Zimbabwe’s current difficulties as a product of domestic policy imbalances.’’
With respect to the impact of sanctions, he was of the view that the freezing of donor-supported programmes, withdrawal of external lines of credit and balance of payments support and the denial of Zimbabwe’s access to the Global Fund for health-related programmes had combined to create the economic crisis.He then attempted to justify his questionable and possibly corrupt quasi fiscal activities by saying that the RBZ had been forced to carry extraordinary responsibilities outside its core business to ensure that the country was fed and had fuel, among other things.Gono was supposed to appear before the Budget and Finance Committee of the recently dissolved parliament to expose the so-called cash barons but it was reported that the meeting was now postponed and will only take place after the elections by which time there may be new players in parliament.
Gono is firmly in control of economic actors who are reduced to beggars for this or that dispensation on the false premise that the RBZ has an existence outside the control of citizens. While it is universally accepted that no state can exist on its own it is clearly evident in the Gono construction that with or without elections ZANU-PF will be in charge and by deductive logic he will be in power as well to continue to play tactical games with people’s resources and steal their future through manipulative actions.
A central bank should ordinarily represent a repository of trust and integrity but the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has been reduced to a theatre of games and machinations while the nation is at its knees groping for solutions and desperate for direction and answers.
At last week’s announcement of the monetary policy statement, Dr. Gono has this to say: "We have chosen a low-key presentation of this monetary policy statement for strategic reasons while we prepare for a comprehensive post-elections policy program.’’ He also made startling revelation that the RBZ would come up with a post-elections monetary policy blueprint that will cover a 24-month recovery programme stretching from May 2008 through to April 2010.It appears that Gono already knows the outcome of the general elections otherwise he would have been cautious instead of preempting the actions of a new administration particularly given that this landmark election will involve Presidential, Parliamentary and local choices. It appears that Gono has already discounted the possibility of any other outcome than the victory of ZANU-PF.
In line with his belief that ZANU-PF will win the election, Gono said that the post election programme will focus on, among other things, the removal of pricing distortions in such areas as fuel, agricultural inputs and outputs, multiple interest and exchange rates, electricity, water and other municipal and parastatal service charges. Does this not sound familiar? Is it not the same Gono who said failure is not an option? Why would citizens of Zimbabwe place their trust on him after the elections? If these policies makes sense now what defer them to the post election period? Is it the change that Zimbabweans should vote for on 29 March 2008?He also said that the government will also look at the subsidies policy with a view to scrapping untargeted general subsidies, amend investment laws, and boost productivity through incentives for key sectors — agriculture, mining, tourism and manufacturing.The Governor who is increasingly assuming the role of an unelected President had no kind words for Government ministries, local authorities, parastatals and some sections of the business community which he alleged have over the years failed to take heed of policy advice and warnings from the central bank as if to suggest that these state institutions are now accountable to him. Under what constitutional order would a Governor of the central bank make such statements? It can only be when a democratic order has been irretrievably broken. It is important for citizens to record all the words of Gono because they help in exposing the extent of the breakdown of the rule of law and the collapse of the state. As is now characteristic of Gono, he spared no effort to lament the impact of the sanctions imposed on the country by the European Union, the United States and their allies, saying there were "considerable attempts being made to dismantle Zimbabwe’s economic fabric through a combination of armory". He was also reported to have said: "The subtle nature of some of these sanctions has regrettably escaped the eyes of some stakeholders here at home and many others in the world community who, instead, are interpreting Zimbabwe’s current difficulties as a product of domestic policy imbalances.’’
With respect to the impact of sanctions, he was of the view that the freezing of donor-supported programmes, withdrawal of external lines of credit and balance of payments support and the denial of Zimbabwe’s access to the Global Fund for health-related programmes had combined to create the economic crisis.He then attempted to justify his questionable and possibly corrupt quasi fiscal activities by saying that the RBZ had been forced to carry extraordinary responsibilities outside its core business to ensure that the country was fed and had fuel, among other things.Gono was supposed to appear before the Budget and Finance Committee of the recently dissolved parliament to expose the so-called cash barons but it was reported that the meeting was now postponed and will only take place after the elections by which time there may be new players in parliament.
Gono is firmly in control of economic actors who are reduced to beggars for this or that dispensation on the false premise that the RBZ has an existence outside the control of citizens. While it is universally accepted that no state can exist on its own it is clearly evident in the Gono construction that with or without elections ZANU-PF will be in charge and by deductive logic he will be in power as well to continue to play tactical games with people’s resources and steal their future through manipulative actions.
Cash Barons – Flatwater Revisited
A case has been made that Zimbabwe is under siege and, therefore, the end should justify the means. In about 56 days, Zimbabweans will be faced with a choice about who should shape their future and they will have to think seriously about the role of state institutions in undermining or promoting their collective interests.
The RBZ has boldly asserted that it has been forced to go beyond its mandate because of extraordinary conditions prevailing in the economy. It is has been pointed out that the actions of the Western countries combined with the nefarious activities of unscrupulous business and political actors have created the economic mess.
The recent cases involving the disbursement of funds by the RBZ to a relatively unknown company, Flatwater, to procure tractors as well as the handling of the Dorothy Primrose Mutekede matter have exposed the role of the RBZ in undermining public confidence in state institutions.
On the Flatwater matter, the court was told last week by the RBZ financial intelligence director, Mr. Mirirai Chiremba that Flatwater was chosen because it had a good track record dealing in foreign currency related transactions ignoring the fact that such a record has been used in targeting other persons such as Mushore, Muponda, Kuruneri, Makamba not forgetting yours truly and only recently Van Hoogstraten for prosecution.
The state prosecutor had submitted that there seemed to have been a conspiracy between Flatwater and RBZ as there appeared to have been no due diligence and proper agreement between the two parties before Z$7 million was disbursed to Flatwater.
Chiremba said that Flatwater had dealt with several renowned companies like Delta, Blue Ribbon and had in the past supplied the central bank with more than 300 tractors under the purportedly the same program.
What is strange from the testimony of Chiremba is that the representatives of Flatwater who appeared previously before the same magistrate, Tendai Chivaviro and Misheck Manjoro, forgot to present the same resume of the company and omitted to mention that the company had been involved in similar transactions with third parties who also should be investigated for possible foreign exchange violations.
It is strange that the state prosecutor found it fit to ask for an order to compel the RBZ to explain its role in a transaction that clearly had ramifications for the integrity of the state if Flatwater was a well established and financially sound company.
Misheck Manjoro and Tendai Chivaviro have already admitted to violating the exchange control regulations by playing a role in a scheme financed by the RBZ. If the RBZ was satisfied that Flatwater, a company incorporated under the laws of Zimbabwe, had access to foreign currency without alerting the police as has been the case in similar circumstances, then surely this is a case of selective application of the law.
Chiremba informed the court that Flatwater had previously supplied the RBZ with 300 tractors without explaining how a Zimbabwean registered company that is subject to the same punitive exchange control regulations would have access to foreign currency that other companies in similar circumstances do not have.
The relationship between Gono and the CEO of Delta is well known to confirm that Flatwater may have been used as a vehicle for Friends of Gono (FOG) to access foreign currency without being subject to normal rules applicable to Enemies of Gono (EOG).
Delta’s sales are in local currency and yet its inputs are largely in foreign currency. The question then becomes how Delta has been immune from foreign exchange violations unless it belongs to the category of companies that are untouchable. The Coca Cola Company supplies concentrate to Delta that has to be paid in foreign currency as is the case for imported tractors. Zimbabwe is in short of foreign currency and the suppliers of foreign currency including those in the diaspora are unwilling to part with it at the insulting official exchange rate.
Gono is fully aware as many business people are that the prevailing official exchange rate is unworkable. Instead of telling the truth to his principal, President Mugabe, Gono has chosen to lie and protect only his friends like Blue Ribbon and Delta. He wants the country to believe that companies like Flatwater would be stupid enough to part with foreign currency sourced from dubious sources that may well turn out to be some of the big names in the export business at the official exchange rate.
An inescapable conclusion can be drawn from Chiremba’s testimony that Flatwater has acquired a track record of illegal transactions that fall into a category of generally corrupt transactions in which the state is constructively involved in. The only mechanism through which shadowy companies like Flatwater can operate is through the sanction of the RBZ. It is evident that something went terribly wrong prompting the RBZ to report the matter to the police as if they were innocent role players.
Chiremba had this to say about the company: "Flatwater has a good track record, we have worked well with the company, so we had no reason to doubt its credibility." In what context would a central bank work well with a private non banking company? How was the company selected by the RBZ? Why would the RBZ be party to a transaction involving the procurement of foreign goods and pay for such goods in local currency without taking any interest on the source of the foreign funds and the implied exchange rate?
The court was told that Flatwater, a purportedly sound company, had failed to acquire the outstanding 59 tractors because US$1.6 million belonging to the company had been locked in the collapsed Premier Bank. Allegations have been made about Gono’s personal interest in Premier Bank. Could it be the case that Chiremba had no choice but to cover up the role of the RBZ by implicating a bank whose independence is questionable in a transaction that has helped unmask the illegal operations of the RBZ? It has not been explained how Flatwater would be in a position to have foreign currency in its possession in a local bank. Where did Flatwater get the foreign currency?
What emerged after Chiremba’s testimony is that the lawyer representing Flatwater, Steven Chibune, had no choice but to apply for the directors of the company to pay Z$200 billion installments for six months as repayment for the money allegedly locked in the collapsed Premier Bank. Why would Chibune find it fit to make this application if the funds belonging to Flatwater were legitimately locked in a collapsed bank? Would it not have made more sense for Chibune to apply to join in the Premier Bank estate in the litigation? The only rational explanation is that no funds were locked in Premier Bank.
It is curious that Chibune offered a number of alternatives for the recovery of the funds that disappeared from Flatwater. He also proposed that an order be granted for the state to recover its money from the title deeds it was holding as part of the bail conditions the directors had been tied to when it is common cause that the state was not involved in the transaction. Even Chibune seems to have accepted that it was, indeed, the state that had contracted with Flatwater instead of the RBZ.
He made the point that: "The fiscus has a number of options to recover its money. It is within this court's powers to make an order to recover the outstanding money since it holds the title deeds of properties owned by the accused persons whose value is well above the money complained of." If one accepts that the rule of law is still prevailing in Zimbabwe then surely it is absurd for Chibune to make this concession that the state was a contracting party in what appears at face value to be a civil matter. The statement by Chibune confirms that there was no formal agreement between the RBZ and Flatwater suggesting that there could well be more such transactions involving people’s money.
It is not strange that it was the same Chiremba who failed to protect the evidence against Ms. Mutekede. Is the RBZ above the law? It is scary to know that the RBZ has no qualms dealing with companies whose bona fides is clearly questionable and yet purport to occupy a high ground on key moral and ethical questions in terms of business transactions.
It is unfortunate that an environment now exists in Zimbabwe in which members of the judiciary finds themselves financially embarrassed to the extent that they have no choice but to rely on the RBZ for financial support. In such an atmosphere, no justice can be expected and the RBZ’s partners in crime like Flatwater are then presented as angels in shinning armor while other role players not aligned to the system are vilified for the same conduct.
The RBZ has boldly asserted that it has been forced to go beyond its mandate because of extraordinary conditions prevailing in the economy. It is has been pointed out that the actions of the Western countries combined with the nefarious activities of unscrupulous business and political actors have created the economic mess.
The recent cases involving the disbursement of funds by the RBZ to a relatively unknown company, Flatwater, to procure tractors as well as the handling of the Dorothy Primrose Mutekede matter have exposed the role of the RBZ in undermining public confidence in state institutions.
On the Flatwater matter, the court was told last week by the RBZ financial intelligence director, Mr. Mirirai Chiremba that Flatwater was chosen because it had a good track record dealing in foreign currency related transactions ignoring the fact that such a record has been used in targeting other persons such as Mushore, Muponda, Kuruneri, Makamba not forgetting yours truly and only recently Van Hoogstraten for prosecution.
The state prosecutor had submitted that there seemed to have been a conspiracy between Flatwater and RBZ as there appeared to have been no due diligence and proper agreement between the two parties before Z$7 million was disbursed to Flatwater.
Chiremba said that Flatwater had dealt with several renowned companies like Delta, Blue Ribbon and had in the past supplied the central bank with more than 300 tractors under the purportedly the same program.
What is strange from the testimony of Chiremba is that the representatives of Flatwater who appeared previously before the same magistrate, Tendai Chivaviro and Misheck Manjoro, forgot to present the same resume of the company and omitted to mention that the company had been involved in similar transactions with third parties who also should be investigated for possible foreign exchange violations.
It is strange that the state prosecutor found it fit to ask for an order to compel the RBZ to explain its role in a transaction that clearly had ramifications for the integrity of the state if Flatwater was a well established and financially sound company.
Misheck Manjoro and Tendai Chivaviro have already admitted to violating the exchange control regulations by playing a role in a scheme financed by the RBZ. If the RBZ was satisfied that Flatwater, a company incorporated under the laws of Zimbabwe, had access to foreign currency without alerting the police as has been the case in similar circumstances, then surely this is a case of selective application of the law.
Chiremba informed the court that Flatwater had previously supplied the RBZ with 300 tractors without explaining how a Zimbabwean registered company that is subject to the same punitive exchange control regulations would have access to foreign currency that other companies in similar circumstances do not have.
The relationship between Gono and the CEO of Delta is well known to confirm that Flatwater may have been used as a vehicle for Friends of Gono (FOG) to access foreign currency without being subject to normal rules applicable to Enemies of Gono (EOG).
Delta’s sales are in local currency and yet its inputs are largely in foreign currency. The question then becomes how Delta has been immune from foreign exchange violations unless it belongs to the category of companies that are untouchable. The Coca Cola Company supplies concentrate to Delta that has to be paid in foreign currency as is the case for imported tractors. Zimbabwe is in short of foreign currency and the suppliers of foreign currency including those in the diaspora are unwilling to part with it at the insulting official exchange rate.
Gono is fully aware as many business people are that the prevailing official exchange rate is unworkable. Instead of telling the truth to his principal, President Mugabe, Gono has chosen to lie and protect only his friends like Blue Ribbon and Delta. He wants the country to believe that companies like Flatwater would be stupid enough to part with foreign currency sourced from dubious sources that may well turn out to be some of the big names in the export business at the official exchange rate.
An inescapable conclusion can be drawn from Chiremba’s testimony that Flatwater has acquired a track record of illegal transactions that fall into a category of generally corrupt transactions in which the state is constructively involved in. The only mechanism through which shadowy companies like Flatwater can operate is through the sanction of the RBZ. It is evident that something went terribly wrong prompting the RBZ to report the matter to the police as if they were innocent role players.
Chiremba had this to say about the company: "Flatwater has a good track record, we have worked well with the company, so we had no reason to doubt its credibility." In what context would a central bank work well with a private non banking company? How was the company selected by the RBZ? Why would the RBZ be party to a transaction involving the procurement of foreign goods and pay for such goods in local currency without taking any interest on the source of the foreign funds and the implied exchange rate?
The court was told that Flatwater, a purportedly sound company, had failed to acquire the outstanding 59 tractors because US$1.6 million belonging to the company had been locked in the collapsed Premier Bank. Allegations have been made about Gono’s personal interest in Premier Bank. Could it be the case that Chiremba had no choice but to cover up the role of the RBZ by implicating a bank whose independence is questionable in a transaction that has helped unmask the illegal operations of the RBZ? It has not been explained how Flatwater would be in a position to have foreign currency in its possession in a local bank. Where did Flatwater get the foreign currency?
What emerged after Chiremba’s testimony is that the lawyer representing Flatwater, Steven Chibune, had no choice but to apply for the directors of the company to pay Z$200 billion installments for six months as repayment for the money allegedly locked in the collapsed Premier Bank. Why would Chibune find it fit to make this application if the funds belonging to Flatwater were legitimately locked in a collapsed bank? Would it not have made more sense for Chibune to apply to join in the Premier Bank estate in the litigation? The only rational explanation is that no funds were locked in Premier Bank.
It is curious that Chibune offered a number of alternatives for the recovery of the funds that disappeared from Flatwater. He also proposed that an order be granted for the state to recover its money from the title deeds it was holding as part of the bail conditions the directors had been tied to when it is common cause that the state was not involved in the transaction. Even Chibune seems to have accepted that it was, indeed, the state that had contracted with Flatwater instead of the RBZ.
He made the point that: "The fiscus has a number of options to recover its money. It is within this court's powers to make an order to recover the outstanding money since it holds the title deeds of properties owned by the accused persons whose value is well above the money complained of." If one accepts that the rule of law is still prevailing in Zimbabwe then surely it is absurd for Chibune to make this concession that the state was a contracting party in what appears at face value to be a civil matter. The statement by Chibune confirms that there was no formal agreement between the RBZ and Flatwater suggesting that there could well be more such transactions involving people’s money.
It is not strange that it was the same Chiremba who failed to protect the evidence against Ms. Mutekede. Is the RBZ above the law? It is scary to know that the RBZ has no qualms dealing with companies whose bona fides is clearly questionable and yet purport to occupy a high ground on key moral and ethical questions in terms of business transactions.
It is unfortunate that an environment now exists in Zimbabwe in which members of the judiciary finds themselves financially embarrassed to the extent that they have no choice but to rely on the RBZ for financial support. In such an atmosphere, no justice can be expected and the RBZ’s partners in crime like Flatwater are then presented as angels in shinning armor while other role players not aligned to the system are vilified for the same conduct.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Zimbabwe 2008: The triumph of the politics of fear
It is now a reality that the harmonised polls will be held on 29 March 2008.
Only last year this time, the conventional wisdom in many opposition circles was that President Mugabe would not secure the mandate of his party as a candidate when his term expired let alone him being democratically endorsed as candidate of the party for the 2008 elections.
Many experts advanced the notion that Mugabe would not last the year as the head of state and ZANU-PF will disintegrate into tribal factions. A combination of internal party contradictions and confusion was meant to facilitate the exit of Mugabe from the political scene.
A proposition was then advanced that Mugabe had lost his grip on the party to the extent that his proposal to shorten the parliamentary term from 2010 to 2008 and the harmonization of the presidential, parliamentary and local elections would be opposed by his party’s central committee. Some of Zimbabwe’s best minds were occupied with scenarios of the impending post-Mugabe era and many options were explored excluding the prospect of Mugabe being relevant in 2008 and beyond.
It is reasonable to ask the question why intellectuals and policy analysts including the MDC failed to read the politics of ZANU-PF. What has been striking is the naivety of the political players and there could be no better demonstration of such infantile approach to political discourse than the manner in which the SADC mediated talks were handled and concluded with the constructive support of the opposition who now seek to cry foul after the event.
There was an acceptance in many circles that ZANU-PF was fast disintegrating and the perceived factions in the party would constructively assist the opposition to oust Mugabe. This assistance would come in the form of a spirited opposition to the harmonisation project and Mugabe’s candidature.
It was Mugabe whose term of office was to constitutionally end in March 2008. In the face of this inevitability and recognizing the dangers of Zimbabweans going to the polls to elect a President against a background of an economic meltdown, President Mugabe had no choice but to reflect not only on his prospects for electoral success but also the implications on his party whose legitimacy is now premised more on fear than hope.
President Mugabe’s reaction was predictable and his assessment of the situation was spot on. He mooted the idea of harmonising the presidential and parliamentary elections and initially even his own colleagues in ZANU-PF did not comprehend the rationale for such a move.
It was evident then as it is now that if the choice about who should lead Zimbabwe for the next five years was informed by hope, then ZANU-PF would not be on the radar screen. It would be unthinkable for any rational citizen to condemn his/her future to the politics of fear by electing a party that chooses to distance itself from its own record in government and instead selectively chooses to position itself as an opposition party.
ZANU-PF has accepted the notion that if you cannot beat them join them and it is now evident that the election manifesto of any opposition party has been stolen by the ruling party who will go into the election campaigning for change while offering nothing new.
I have no doubt that even President Mugabe is acutely aware that Zimbabweans are afraid of the future and are not free to make the choices that any free citizen would be expected to make in any democratic society. What are the real choices available to Zimbabweans in 2008?
Like any strategist, President Mugabe has successfully executed a scheme that many of his adversaries thought would not see the light of day.
The presumed factions in ZANU-PF vanished into thin air and not only was he democratically endorsed at the extraordinary congress held in December but he managed to convince not only his party but his political nemesis, both MDC factions, to support the constitutional amendment paving the way for the term of parliament to be cut so as to make the landmark election a referendum not only for him but for the party as would have been the case if he had taken the gamble to contest the elections under the old constitution.
There is no doubt that President Mugabe is going into this election with a party whose political fortune is inextricably linked to his own but more fundamentally that he has exposed the naivety of his political enemies who failed to appreciate the real agenda that motivated ZANU-PF to accept SADC’s intervention.
President Mugabe can legitimately argue that he is not what the Western countries perceive him to be. He has allowed the opposition that never acknowledged his legitimacy to be part of the kamikaze/(suicidal) politics while at the same time presenting ZANU-PF as a democratic party that respects the sovereignty of citizens to write their own constitution and determine their own destiny.
The MDC is now more challenged intellectually and politically having been part of a process whose outcome has clearly been poisonous to its own survival. For MDC to argue that its actions are informed by democratic values when its residual argument after the Mbeki facilitated talks is that ZANU-PF and MDC should replace the citizens of Zimbabwe in the task of writing a new constitution does not make any sense even to a kindergarten politician.
If MDC thought that a new constitution was a deal breaker then surely they should have raised this issue at the outset. President Mugabe’s position on the face of it appears to be more reasonable and in line with the founding principles of the post colonial state. The position taken by Mr. Tsvangirai that negotiations should have produced a new constitution is not even supported by his colleagues in the non-state space.
What ZANU-PF can now take to the electorate is a position that when MDC was tested in the context of the negotiations it has exposed itself on key and fundamental issues that should help in defining the party’s democratic credentials. ZANU-PF’s arguments are now similar to the National Constitutional Assembly that has argued for the past 8 years that a constitution is a serious document requiring the participation of citizens and this can only be done in a fair and transparent manner.
Political games produce their own heroes/heroines but in the final analysis we have to ask whether it is fair and just for the future of 13 million Zimbabweans to be condemned by the actions of the few who see in politics career advancement and opportunity maximisation.
As Zimbabweans brace themselves for the elections, the excitement that should accompany such an endeavour has already evaporated and the choices available may not have anything to do with advancing the interests of the national democratic revolution but the interests of the political actors of the day.
ZANU-PF has positioned itself as an anti-imperialist political institution that is under siege and, therefore, any electoral outcome that will displace it will necessarily be regarded as constituting a negation of the founding principles of the post colonial state. Accepting this premise, it is evident that the stakes will be escalated to a situation in which citizens will be placed with no real choice but to surrender to the status quo ante.
ZANU-PF will argue that there is no better person to lead the fight against imperialism and neo colonialism than President Mugabe. Accordingly, anyone who is against imperialism would have no other choice but to support ZANU-PF not because such a choice will advance any national interest.
President Mugabe has been at the helm for the past 28 years and in normal circumstances he would be running on his record of achievements but regrettably he will be running on his liberation credentials. Nation building is a far more complex project than liberation politics.
Whereas President Mugabe led the struggle against colonialism informed by the injustice of the system unfortunately nation building has to be informed by positive values. Any modern state that is progressive requires the participation of citizens in shaping its destiny and fear has never been credited as an instrument for nation building.
What motivated the liberation struggle was the desire by the majority to create a new civilisation based on freedom, justice and equality. One would have to ask whether it is the case that the last 28 years have advanced the interests of Zimbabwe in reducing the frontiers of poverty and expanding the envelope of opportunities, justice, freedom and equality.
If the choices were to be informed by objective principles, I am convinced that it would be patently obvious that Zimbabweans have been robbed of their future by a few wise men and women. While ZANU-PF’s engine is driven by the purported hatred of the colonial system, MDC appears to be equally driven by a hatred of President Mugabe and less by the policies and programs of ZANU-PF.
President Mugabe has demonstrated that ZANU-PF is solidly behind him notwithstanding the constant rumours about factionalism in the party. Unlike the opposition forces, Mugabe is the undisputed leader even in the face of acknowledged moral and economic management deficits.
Mr. Tsvangirai has been placed in a political corner and it is not clear how he will wiggle himself out of it without undermining and compromising his constituency. While MDC is still trying to figure out what to do, the ZANU-PF machine is in full gear. The destination is known and there is little doubt about who will be in charge after the ritual of elections.
The choices for MDC are difficult. If they participate in an election managed and controlled by ZANU-PF, the outcome is as inevitable as the outcome of the Mbeki-led talks. The winner is not only predictable but the actions of the loser after the elections are also predictable.
It is evident that the politics of fear has produced an atmosphere in which it is difficult to attract good Zimbabwean minds to intervene in the political space and ZANU-PF must take responsibility for this.
Many of the proponents of the third way who have invested in an alternative political paradigm without Mugabe have largely misread the situation. It all started with the abortive Tsholotsho project, and then an investment was made on Mujuru and it fizzled out and finally out of desperation an investment was made on Makoni.
It is now evident that Makoni was not part of the deal but a few wise men devised a scheme to politically embarrass Makoni as an incentive for him to join the race for which he like many Zimbabweans are afraid to join as long as President Mugabe is at the helm.
The track record of ZANU-PF dealing with citizens who naively thought that the road to statehouse is smooth is all too familiar to give people like Makoni the courage to enter a political lion’s den. Predictably, Makoni whose career has largely been shaped by ZANU-PF declined to associate himself with an ill conceived political project leaving its promoters in a state of shock. However, the promoters of Makoni’s candidature are not different from the promoters of Mnangagwa and Mujuru. Only time will tell whether they will shift attention to another unsuspecting Zimbabwean.
What kind of system would produce this kind of spectacle whereby 13 million citizens become so helpless and leaderless? Surely, the promoters of Makoni must have known his weaknesses and that anyone who dreams to occupy the statehouse before the incumbent is dead would be committing political suicide and inviting violence and possibly prison time.
The mere fact that the opposition appears to be in disarray confirms that the politics of fear does work and has, indeed, triumphed in Zimbabwe. Citizens are afraid and if well placed individuals like Makoni would rather be condemned into silence while the future of the country is daily being mortgaged then we can only say: “Cry the beloved country”.
The future of Zimbabwe will not become better if hard choices are not made now and preferably before the elections. It will be difficult to advance an argument after the elections that Mugabe is not legitimate and also to suggest that the constitution that MDC has already approved should not be presented to the people of Zimbabwe for them to approve it.
It has been argued that even the members of MDC have accepted that Tsvangirai’s political fate will be sealed in March and, thereafter, a new dispensation will be negotiated between the opposition legislators and ZANU-PF that will lead to a constitution. Such a process will naturally be led by ZANU-PF and President Mugabe will then presumably bow out at the 2009 party congress that is expected to elect a new leadership for the party and possibly the government.
What President Mugabe has managed to do is to place the fortunes of ZANU-PF ahead of the nation. If you vote for ZANU-PF, then surely you must accept that no change is change. Anyone who loves Zimbabwe would agree that change must visit Zimbabwe sooner rather than later because if the status quo remains the risk of a whole generation being sacrificed to satisfy the egos of the few is high.
When the future of a country is at stake, it behoves on everyone to step back and reflect on what needs to happen in Zimbabwe for hope to take centre stage as a value driver in nation building. The triumph of the politics of fear produces the worst in mankind and intimidates citizens from being part of the change they want to see.
Only last year this time, the conventional wisdom in many opposition circles was that President Mugabe would not secure the mandate of his party as a candidate when his term expired let alone him being democratically endorsed as candidate of the party for the 2008 elections.
Many experts advanced the notion that Mugabe would not last the year as the head of state and ZANU-PF will disintegrate into tribal factions. A combination of internal party contradictions and confusion was meant to facilitate the exit of Mugabe from the political scene.
A proposition was then advanced that Mugabe had lost his grip on the party to the extent that his proposal to shorten the parliamentary term from 2010 to 2008 and the harmonization of the presidential, parliamentary and local elections would be opposed by his party’s central committee. Some of Zimbabwe’s best minds were occupied with scenarios of the impending post-Mugabe era and many options were explored excluding the prospect of Mugabe being relevant in 2008 and beyond.
It is reasonable to ask the question why intellectuals and policy analysts including the MDC failed to read the politics of ZANU-PF. What has been striking is the naivety of the political players and there could be no better demonstration of such infantile approach to political discourse than the manner in which the SADC mediated talks were handled and concluded with the constructive support of the opposition who now seek to cry foul after the event.
There was an acceptance in many circles that ZANU-PF was fast disintegrating and the perceived factions in the party would constructively assist the opposition to oust Mugabe. This assistance would come in the form of a spirited opposition to the harmonisation project and Mugabe’s candidature.
It was Mugabe whose term of office was to constitutionally end in March 2008. In the face of this inevitability and recognizing the dangers of Zimbabweans going to the polls to elect a President against a background of an economic meltdown, President Mugabe had no choice but to reflect not only on his prospects for electoral success but also the implications on his party whose legitimacy is now premised more on fear than hope.
President Mugabe’s reaction was predictable and his assessment of the situation was spot on. He mooted the idea of harmonising the presidential and parliamentary elections and initially even his own colleagues in ZANU-PF did not comprehend the rationale for such a move.
It was evident then as it is now that if the choice about who should lead Zimbabwe for the next five years was informed by hope, then ZANU-PF would not be on the radar screen. It would be unthinkable for any rational citizen to condemn his/her future to the politics of fear by electing a party that chooses to distance itself from its own record in government and instead selectively chooses to position itself as an opposition party.
ZANU-PF has accepted the notion that if you cannot beat them join them and it is now evident that the election manifesto of any opposition party has been stolen by the ruling party who will go into the election campaigning for change while offering nothing new.
I have no doubt that even President Mugabe is acutely aware that Zimbabweans are afraid of the future and are not free to make the choices that any free citizen would be expected to make in any democratic society. What are the real choices available to Zimbabweans in 2008?
Like any strategist, President Mugabe has successfully executed a scheme that many of his adversaries thought would not see the light of day.
The presumed factions in ZANU-PF vanished into thin air and not only was he democratically endorsed at the extraordinary congress held in December but he managed to convince not only his party but his political nemesis, both MDC factions, to support the constitutional amendment paving the way for the term of parliament to be cut so as to make the landmark election a referendum not only for him but for the party as would have been the case if he had taken the gamble to contest the elections under the old constitution.
There is no doubt that President Mugabe is going into this election with a party whose political fortune is inextricably linked to his own but more fundamentally that he has exposed the naivety of his political enemies who failed to appreciate the real agenda that motivated ZANU-PF to accept SADC’s intervention.
President Mugabe can legitimately argue that he is not what the Western countries perceive him to be. He has allowed the opposition that never acknowledged his legitimacy to be part of the kamikaze/(suicidal) politics while at the same time presenting ZANU-PF as a democratic party that respects the sovereignty of citizens to write their own constitution and determine their own destiny.
The MDC is now more challenged intellectually and politically having been part of a process whose outcome has clearly been poisonous to its own survival. For MDC to argue that its actions are informed by democratic values when its residual argument after the Mbeki facilitated talks is that ZANU-PF and MDC should replace the citizens of Zimbabwe in the task of writing a new constitution does not make any sense even to a kindergarten politician.
If MDC thought that a new constitution was a deal breaker then surely they should have raised this issue at the outset. President Mugabe’s position on the face of it appears to be more reasonable and in line with the founding principles of the post colonial state. The position taken by Mr. Tsvangirai that negotiations should have produced a new constitution is not even supported by his colleagues in the non-state space.
What ZANU-PF can now take to the electorate is a position that when MDC was tested in the context of the negotiations it has exposed itself on key and fundamental issues that should help in defining the party’s democratic credentials. ZANU-PF’s arguments are now similar to the National Constitutional Assembly that has argued for the past 8 years that a constitution is a serious document requiring the participation of citizens and this can only be done in a fair and transparent manner.
Political games produce their own heroes/heroines but in the final analysis we have to ask whether it is fair and just for the future of 13 million Zimbabweans to be condemned by the actions of the few who see in politics career advancement and opportunity maximisation.
As Zimbabweans brace themselves for the elections, the excitement that should accompany such an endeavour has already evaporated and the choices available may not have anything to do with advancing the interests of the national democratic revolution but the interests of the political actors of the day.
ZANU-PF has positioned itself as an anti-imperialist political institution that is under siege and, therefore, any electoral outcome that will displace it will necessarily be regarded as constituting a negation of the founding principles of the post colonial state. Accepting this premise, it is evident that the stakes will be escalated to a situation in which citizens will be placed with no real choice but to surrender to the status quo ante.
ZANU-PF will argue that there is no better person to lead the fight against imperialism and neo colonialism than President Mugabe. Accordingly, anyone who is against imperialism would have no other choice but to support ZANU-PF not because such a choice will advance any national interest.
President Mugabe has been at the helm for the past 28 years and in normal circumstances he would be running on his record of achievements but regrettably he will be running on his liberation credentials. Nation building is a far more complex project than liberation politics.
Whereas President Mugabe led the struggle against colonialism informed by the injustice of the system unfortunately nation building has to be informed by positive values. Any modern state that is progressive requires the participation of citizens in shaping its destiny and fear has never been credited as an instrument for nation building.
What motivated the liberation struggle was the desire by the majority to create a new civilisation based on freedom, justice and equality. One would have to ask whether it is the case that the last 28 years have advanced the interests of Zimbabwe in reducing the frontiers of poverty and expanding the envelope of opportunities, justice, freedom and equality.
If the choices were to be informed by objective principles, I am convinced that it would be patently obvious that Zimbabweans have been robbed of their future by a few wise men and women. While ZANU-PF’s engine is driven by the purported hatred of the colonial system, MDC appears to be equally driven by a hatred of President Mugabe and less by the policies and programs of ZANU-PF.
President Mugabe has demonstrated that ZANU-PF is solidly behind him notwithstanding the constant rumours about factionalism in the party. Unlike the opposition forces, Mugabe is the undisputed leader even in the face of acknowledged moral and economic management deficits.
Mr. Tsvangirai has been placed in a political corner and it is not clear how he will wiggle himself out of it without undermining and compromising his constituency. While MDC is still trying to figure out what to do, the ZANU-PF machine is in full gear. The destination is known and there is little doubt about who will be in charge after the ritual of elections.
The choices for MDC are difficult. If they participate in an election managed and controlled by ZANU-PF, the outcome is as inevitable as the outcome of the Mbeki-led talks. The winner is not only predictable but the actions of the loser after the elections are also predictable.
It is evident that the politics of fear has produced an atmosphere in which it is difficult to attract good Zimbabwean minds to intervene in the political space and ZANU-PF must take responsibility for this.
Many of the proponents of the third way who have invested in an alternative political paradigm without Mugabe have largely misread the situation. It all started with the abortive Tsholotsho project, and then an investment was made on Mujuru and it fizzled out and finally out of desperation an investment was made on Makoni.
It is now evident that Makoni was not part of the deal but a few wise men devised a scheme to politically embarrass Makoni as an incentive for him to join the race for which he like many Zimbabweans are afraid to join as long as President Mugabe is at the helm.
The track record of ZANU-PF dealing with citizens who naively thought that the road to statehouse is smooth is all too familiar to give people like Makoni the courage to enter a political lion’s den. Predictably, Makoni whose career has largely been shaped by ZANU-PF declined to associate himself with an ill conceived political project leaving its promoters in a state of shock. However, the promoters of Makoni’s candidature are not different from the promoters of Mnangagwa and Mujuru. Only time will tell whether they will shift attention to another unsuspecting Zimbabwean.
What kind of system would produce this kind of spectacle whereby 13 million citizens become so helpless and leaderless? Surely, the promoters of Makoni must have known his weaknesses and that anyone who dreams to occupy the statehouse before the incumbent is dead would be committing political suicide and inviting violence and possibly prison time.
The mere fact that the opposition appears to be in disarray confirms that the politics of fear does work and has, indeed, triumphed in Zimbabwe. Citizens are afraid and if well placed individuals like Makoni would rather be condemned into silence while the future of the country is daily being mortgaged then we can only say: “Cry the beloved country”.
The future of Zimbabwe will not become better if hard choices are not made now and preferably before the elections. It will be difficult to advance an argument after the elections that Mugabe is not legitimate and also to suggest that the constitution that MDC has already approved should not be presented to the people of Zimbabwe for them to approve it.
It has been argued that even the members of MDC have accepted that Tsvangirai’s political fate will be sealed in March and, thereafter, a new dispensation will be negotiated between the opposition legislators and ZANU-PF that will lead to a constitution. Such a process will naturally be led by ZANU-PF and President Mugabe will then presumably bow out at the 2009 party congress that is expected to elect a new leadership for the party and possibly the government.
What President Mugabe has managed to do is to place the fortunes of ZANU-PF ahead of the nation. If you vote for ZANU-PF, then surely you must accept that no change is change. Anyone who loves Zimbabwe would agree that change must visit Zimbabwe sooner rather than later because if the status quo remains the risk of a whole generation being sacrificed to satisfy the egos of the few is high.
When the future of a country is at stake, it behoves on everyone to step back and reflect on what needs to happen in Zimbabwe for hope to take centre stage as a value driver in nation building. The triumph of the politics of fear produces the worst in mankind and intimidates citizens from being part of the change they want to see.
Zimbabwe 2008: The triumph of the politics of fear
It is now a reality that the harmonised polls will be held on 29 March 2008.
Only last year this time, the conventional wisdom in many opposition circles was that President Mugabe would not secure the mandate of his party as a candidate when his term expired let alone him being democratically endorsed as candidate of the party for the 2008 elections.
Many experts advanced the notion that Mugabe would not last the year as the head of state and ZANU-PF will disintegrate into tribal factions. A combination of internal party contradictions and confusion was meant to facilitate the exit of Mugabe from the political scene.
Read more
Only last year this time, the conventional wisdom in many opposition circles was that President Mugabe would not secure the mandate of his party as a candidate when his term expired let alone him being democratically endorsed as candidate of the party for the 2008 elections.
Many experts advanced the notion that Mugabe would not last the year as the head of state and ZANU-PF will disintegrate into tribal factions. A combination of internal party contradictions and confusion was meant to facilitate the exit of Mugabe from the political scene.
Read more
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Obama v Clinton/Clinton and lessons for Africa
Both Senators Obama and Hillary Clinton are democratic Presidential nominees and their emergence as the front runners of their party represents a historic and defining moment in American history.
Since the founding of the republic, the White House has been the exclusive preserve of white males and the thought of an African American and a White Female, albeit a former first lady, being prospective custodians of American values, interests and way of life was certainly not in the minds of the founding fathers of the USA.
The intersection of race and gender in American political life and its dominance in the 2008 elections has to be understood in a broader context of the evolution of the country’s democratic order and the consequences of the civil rights and women suffrage movements.
Without the civil rights movement, Obama would not even have dreamt of being a President of the USA and no one since the late Martin Luther King has tested the sincerity of the American constitutional order in living up to its promise to all its citizens than Obama.
When King chose to dream of a day on which Americans would be judged by the content of their characters than by the colour of their skins little did he know that Obama will rise to the challenge in the lifetime of King’s civil rights contemporaries like Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson and others.
I have no doubt that King would have been proud of Obama and yet Andrew Young feels strongly that Obama is not ready for the mantle choosing to describe former President Clinton as the first black President and, therefore, Obama has nothing to hurry for since black males have already had their share and now it is time for a female i.e. Senator Clinton.
Andrew Young rightly or wrongly feels that Senator Clinton has the necessary experience and maturity to stake a claim on the Presidency than Obama although he makes no attempt to explain what kind of experience the architects of the republic had in mind when they framed the constitution and in it failed to locate the qualification criteria for a President.
What is evident in the American constitution is that there is no requirement for a prospective President to write an examination on what he/she would do if they were elected. It is also common cause that in this year’s election, no candidate has ever been a President and, therefore, the question of experience would ordinarily be irrelevant in making a choice between them.
It would be wrong to argue that the mere fact that Senator Clinton is a spouse of a former President makes her more qualified than any of the other candidates. What is significant, however, is that for the first time, the democrats have chosen to challenge the American psyche by seriously considering Obama and Clinton who represent a departure from the business as usual of politics.
Barely a year ago, Obama’s candidature was not taken seriously and even Senator Clinton given her known disposition on the issue of race considered him to be a jolly good fellow and, in fact, supported his entry into mainstream politics in as much as I presume she would have supported, for instance, Jesse Jackson’s candidature. However, of late it is emerging that beneath the seemingly liberal posture of the Clintons is a deep seated patronising and racist attitude that only Obama’s serious candidature could have managed to expose.
Now the issues of race and gender are in the open and it is not white men who are questioning the wisdom of having the first African American President but women in general and even some of the civil rights movement founding practitioners.
Senator Clinton would also not have been a candidate were it not for the women suffrage movement but it has taken a long time for the possibility to even remotely be imaginable.
As an African, I am deeply moved by the capacity of the American system to evolve and even allow people like Obama and Clinton to dream of becoming a CEO of the most powerful country of our time.
The background of Obama surely could not have prepared him for the highest office in the land as my own background did not prepare me to occupy the business address that I now call my own.
Senator Clinton can count on her husband, Bill, who is increasingly becoming a co-candidate and exposing how false his credentials are on the question of race. In advancing the interests of Senator Clinton in the democratic primaries, Bill is arguing that Obama should and must not be trusted in as much as many of us should and must not be trusted to be in business. Yes, we are told that we need experience, we are aggressive, we are corrupt and, indeed, we are too ambitious.
The message is clear, Obama should know his place. The attitude displayed by Clinton/Clinton is no different from that displayed by incumbent African Presidents against their opponents. The public is easily poisoned to believe that in order for anyone to be President he must be intelligent and must be capable of solving national problems forgetting that it is not the President’s job to think for citizens or create a state that can compete with citizens.
No country is ever developed by conversations that take place in corridors of power rather it is the product of the efforts of citizens. In many African countries, the candidature of Obama and Clinton would be unthinkable and, if anything, they would have been condemned to prisons for just imaging that they were competent enough to assume the job of President.
Many white liberals think the same way as the Clintons about Africans. A position is easily taken that Africans cannot rise to the occasion and frequently an assumption is made that solutions to national challenges must originate from the head of the President. In fact, instead of supporting and investing in the change they want to see they often would rather not be involved in African politics.
It is unfortunate that the Clintons have chosen to see Obama as a competitor than a fellow revolutionary in the quest to extend the perimeter of democracy in America.
Whoever becomes President between the two of them will have far reaching implications in terms of redefining the architecture of power in America and energising people to become engaged in politics.
There is no doubt that Obama’s audacity has brought hope to many who thought that the American constitutional order was not relevant to him. The mere fact that he is accused of not having the necessary experience makes him an ideal candidate to test the sincerity of American values in terms of the bill of rights enshrined in their constitution.
If America can produce Obama and Clinton, surely Africa will sufficiently be challenged to look at itself and think out of the box in terms of leadership. How many of leaders the leaders of Africa think that they are indispensable? How many of their supporters think rightly or wrongly that leadership should be reserved for the select few?
America has been a role model for many and the fight between Obama and the Clintons only serve to undermine the purported superiority of the American system and its ability to open opportunities to all. The role of hope in nation building cannot be disputed.
Africa’s founding fathers were like Obama told that they could never unseat the brutal colonial system but history has shown that with hope anything is possible. We are all products of hope and I have no doubt that anyone who is observing the American electoral system would agree with me that its capacity to energise citizens to take ownership of their destinies ought to be emulated in Africa.
We own our own future and yet trust other people to shape it. The Africa we want to see can only be the product of own efforts and no state can ever be greater than the collective efforts of its citizens. We are the citizens of Africa and the time is now for us to seriously and critically examine whether we are living up to the expectations of future generations who will look back and ask the question what you did or did not do to make our continent a place of opportunity and hope.
Since the founding of the republic, the White House has been the exclusive preserve of white males and the thought of an African American and a White Female, albeit a former first lady, being prospective custodians of American values, interests and way of life was certainly not in the minds of the founding fathers of the USA.
The intersection of race and gender in American political life and its dominance in the 2008 elections has to be understood in a broader context of the evolution of the country’s democratic order and the consequences of the civil rights and women suffrage movements.
Without the civil rights movement, Obama would not even have dreamt of being a President of the USA and no one since the late Martin Luther King has tested the sincerity of the American constitutional order in living up to its promise to all its citizens than Obama.
When King chose to dream of a day on which Americans would be judged by the content of their characters than by the colour of their skins little did he know that Obama will rise to the challenge in the lifetime of King’s civil rights contemporaries like Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson and others.
I have no doubt that King would have been proud of Obama and yet Andrew Young feels strongly that Obama is not ready for the mantle choosing to describe former President Clinton as the first black President and, therefore, Obama has nothing to hurry for since black males have already had their share and now it is time for a female i.e. Senator Clinton.
Andrew Young rightly or wrongly feels that Senator Clinton has the necessary experience and maturity to stake a claim on the Presidency than Obama although he makes no attempt to explain what kind of experience the architects of the republic had in mind when they framed the constitution and in it failed to locate the qualification criteria for a President.
What is evident in the American constitution is that there is no requirement for a prospective President to write an examination on what he/she would do if they were elected. It is also common cause that in this year’s election, no candidate has ever been a President and, therefore, the question of experience would ordinarily be irrelevant in making a choice between them.
It would be wrong to argue that the mere fact that Senator Clinton is a spouse of a former President makes her more qualified than any of the other candidates. What is significant, however, is that for the first time, the democrats have chosen to challenge the American psyche by seriously considering Obama and Clinton who represent a departure from the business as usual of politics.
Barely a year ago, Obama’s candidature was not taken seriously and even Senator Clinton given her known disposition on the issue of race considered him to be a jolly good fellow and, in fact, supported his entry into mainstream politics in as much as I presume she would have supported, for instance, Jesse Jackson’s candidature. However, of late it is emerging that beneath the seemingly liberal posture of the Clintons is a deep seated patronising and racist attitude that only Obama’s serious candidature could have managed to expose.
Now the issues of race and gender are in the open and it is not white men who are questioning the wisdom of having the first African American President but women in general and even some of the civil rights movement founding practitioners.
Senator Clinton would also not have been a candidate were it not for the women suffrage movement but it has taken a long time for the possibility to even remotely be imaginable.
As an African, I am deeply moved by the capacity of the American system to evolve and even allow people like Obama and Clinton to dream of becoming a CEO of the most powerful country of our time.
The background of Obama surely could not have prepared him for the highest office in the land as my own background did not prepare me to occupy the business address that I now call my own.
Senator Clinton can count on her husband, Bill, who is increasingly becoming a co-candidate and exposing how false his credentials are on the question of race. In advancing the interests of Senator Clinton in the democratic primaries, Bill is arguing that Obama should and must not be trusted in as much as many of us should and must not be trusted to be in business. Yes, we are told that we need experience, we are aggressive, we are corrupt and, indeed, we are too ambitious.
The message is clear, Obama should know his place. The attitude displayed by Clinton/Clinton is no different from that displayed by incumbent African Presidents against their opponents. The public is easily poisoned to believe that in order for anyone to be President he must be intelligent and must be capable of solving national problems forgetting that it is not the President’s job to think for citizens or create a state that can compete with citizens.
No country is ever developed by conversations that take place in corridors of power rather it is the product of the efforts of citizens. In many African countries, the candidature of Obama and Clinton would be unthinkable and, if anything, they would have been condemned to prisons for just imaging that they were competent enough to assume the job of President.
Many white liberals think the same way as the Clintons about Africans. A position is easily taken that Africans cannot rise to the occasion and frequently an assumption is made that solutions to national challenges must originate from the head of the President. In fact, instead of supporting and investing in the change they want to see they often would rather not be involved in African politics.
It is unfortunate that the Clintons have chosen to see Obama as a competitor than a fellow revolutionary in the quest to extend the perimeter of democracy in America.
Whoever becomes President between the two of them will have far reaching implications in terms of redefining the architecture of power in America and energising people to become engaged in politics.
There is no doubt that Obama’s audacity has brought hope to many who thought that the American constitutional order was not relevant to him. The mere fact that he is accused of not having the necessary experience makes him an ideal candidate to test the sincerity of American values in terms of the bill of rights enshrined in their constitution.
If America can produce Obama and Clinton, surely Africa will sufficiently be challenged to look at itself and think out of the box in terms of leadership. How many of leaders the leaders of Africa think that they are indispensable? How many of their supporters think rightly or wrongly that leadership should be reserved for the select few?
America has been a role model for many and the fight between Obama and the Clintons only serve to undermine the purported superiority of the American system and its ability to open opportunities to all. The role of hope in nation building cannot be disputed.
Africa’s founding fathers were like Obama told that they could never unseat the brutal colonial system but history has shown that with hope anything is possible. We are all products of hope and I have no doubt that anyone who is observing the American electoral system would agree with me that its capacity to energise citizens to take ownership of their destinies ought to be emulated in Africa.
We own our own future and yet trust other people to shape it. The Africa we want to see can only be the product of own efforts and no state can ever be greater than the collective efforts of its citizens. We are the citizens of Africa and the time is now for us to seriously and critically examine whether we are living up to the expectations of future generations who will look back and ask the question what you did or did not do to make our continent a place of opportunity and hope.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Africa 2008: Citizens, Money and Power in Africa
There are many big questions that should inform African conversations but regrettably we are all guilty of small talk in respect of some key and fundamental issues that have to be addressed if Africa is to advance its cause.
The role of citizens, money and power relationships in shaping Africa’s destiny have to form part of the great debates between and amongst us.
Who does Africa belong to? What are the obligations of African citizenship? What should be the role of the state in a developmental state? These are some of the questions that come to my mind in the quietness of my time when occassionally I reflect on the African condition and the seemingly helpless state of affairs that my continent of birth finds itsef in.
After more than fifty years of trying and US$600 billion worth of aid, the frontiers of poverty have not been reduced in the continent. Even those who argue that Africa should be fundamentally an exclusive home for blacks would agree that without the flow of aid funds, the ability of Africa to address its developmental challenges would be severely limited.
In many African conversations, a proposition is often made that development aid is not necessarily good for Africa. This proposition is frequently premised on the allegation that aid distorts the development choices of Africa and is often used to undermine African sovereignty.
We have seen many countries trying to assert their sovereignty notwithstanding their reliance on development assistance from external sources.
One of the key arguments used during the colonial era for denying blacks any civil rights was that Africans had no material interests to defend as would be required in any democratic order that is characterised by a contestation of values and interests of citizens.
The architecture of the colonial state was crafted in such a manner as to ensure that natives did not have any rights to assert in the economic market. The rule of law and property rights is only relevant if citizens have access to such rights. What is evident is that in both the colonial and post colonial states, the majority of African citizens have been denied access to the means to be free and yet in the later a notion of freedom has been accepted as being in existence.
The alienation of blacks from property rights was necessary in ensuring the exclusion of blacks in the democratic process for they had no rights to assert even if they were given the right to vote.
The post colonial state was expected to open the door for citizen engagement in civic and political affairs. It has often been said that in need freedom is latent and no person can expect to be free if he/she lives in someone’s house. Are African citizens freer today than during the colonial era? Do citizens really have a say in shaping their future?
The first address of power for blacks in a post colonial construction invariably becomes the state. Most of the people who assume state power tend to be less prepared for the jobs that they occupy to the extent that it becomes difficult for citizens to reclaim their sovereignty from career politicians who often are not prepared to relinguish power.
He who pays the piper often calls the tune. The state of the financial situation of Africa suggests that it would be naïve for Africa to deny its donors the right to interfere in the domestic affairs of the beneficiary states if development assistance is the life blood of such countries. Even overgrown babies who fail to secure their own independent financial resources cannot deny their benefactors the right to lecture them on lessons of life.
At some stage it is important for us to take responsibility for our own problems. Any state should derive its legitimacy from its citizens. Without tax payers the state cannot exist and it would be naïve for non-tax payers to claim more from a state that they constructively refuse to finance. The foundational principle of any state must be a recognition that without the sweat of individual citizens there can be no democratic constitutional order.
If African citizens were responsible for financing their own national budgets, I am convinced that no dictatorship would have been allowed to exist. Many households with single bread winners behave no different from donors. How many households in Africa behave in a democratic manner?
It is true that in many African states the only vote that counts is that of the people who count the votes. Citizens are too fragmented and disorganised to make their governments accountable.
In the absence of citizen participation on governance issues, most African states invariably become laboratories for intellectuals to experiment their development theories. If ever there was a continent populated by intellectual bureaucrats one would agree that Africa is one of the best endowed and yet the fruits are missing.
In any developmental process one needs role models and people who refuse to accept things the way they are but who constructively add their voices and actions to change. The last 50 years has seen Africa fail to raise the standards of living of its people while becoming increasingly dependent on foreign tax payers.
Many of us are often angry when we see Africa’s real tax payers i.e. the donors demanding accountability on the part of seemingly sovereign African states and yet fail to locate such anger in the broader context of our collective inability to take responsibility for our inaction and impotence.
Is it reasonable for any concerned donor to seek to make African states accountable for spending their funds? Some have said that it is not reasonable because the same donors were responsible for systematically exploiting African resources during the colonial era for which no compensation has been forthcoming. Using this argument, many would argue that Africa ought to demand aid from the developed countries and such countries should not interfere with the sovereignty of the beneficiary countries.
Naturally money plays a part in nation building and yet the construction of capital is a subject that has eluded many Africans. Our relationship with money ought to be refined and interrogated.
Those who have it in Africa choose to believe that they have it because they are smart. And those who have no money believe that the rich owe them something and their poverty is a creation of the rich. The rich often are intimidated not to participate in politics or choose not to be engaged in the conversations that should define the future of the continent. Invariably their opinions are largely missing and to the extent that blacks and money are soon parted leaving whites and non-Africans holding the purse of Africa, it is the poor who have the burden of deciding who governs Africa while the rich have the luxury of being protected by the people elected by the poor.
Who then is responsible for the unacceptable African condition? Surely we must and should all take responsibility for allowing some African states to become basket cases.
We have chosen to make the responsibility of changing the African condition someone else’s and not ours. As individuals we have the money to change Africa but have chosen to create islands of affluence in the midst of an ocean of poverty. In any economic collapse it is those people with more to lose who should look at themselves and take responsibility for the loss rather than blame those who have nothing to lose.
The raw materials of African politics will remain the poor who should have the same inalienable right to decide through electoral processes who should govern them. There is no system devised by man in a democratic order that gives the rich more voting rights than the poor.
Given the alienation of the majority from the means to be free, it is not surprising that the choices that are made by many African citizens are not informed by facts. The state in most African countries invariably becomes monopolized by the wickedly wise who see in ignorance a powerful weapon for entrenching themselves in power.
Citizen participation in the political process is regarded by the powerful as treason in most African states. Many of us who call ourselves intellectuals often become the roadblocks to progress and enlightenment of the majority.
We have a tendency to blame our leaders for creating the African condition and fail to look at ourselves critically in terms of what we have failed to do in helping to define and shape the destiny of the continent.
We all may not agree on whom Africa belongs to but I believe that it is important that we begin a conversation on identity, heritage and legacy. I am conforted by the fact that in as much as I may think globally I am compelled to act locally. Nation states will naturally take longer to wither notwithstanding the pursuasive arguments of globalisation. It would be unthinkable, for instance, to have a black Chief Justice in China.
Equally, no matter how economically retarded Africans may look, it is a fact that Africans will have to take care of their problems. The law of gravity has many lessons for anyone who believes that non whites cannot be African because in the final analysis a democratic constitutional order threatens the minority and yet in Africa the majority feels perpetually threatened by the minority. How many of us have a tendency of blaming white people for our own inadequacies.
Many founding fathers of post colonial Africa have embraced the state as a super persona that can solve all problems forgeting that the state is nothing but a creation of organised citizens. The state can only function smoothly if citizens take responsibility for their actions. No development can take place in the virtual world but has to be anchored by the initiative of citizens.
I hope that in my lifetime a day will arrive when Africans in their various shapes realise that there can never be a wrong time to take ownership of their lives. In many countries, evil men and women have stolen the future of nation states to the extent that many rational and patriotic Africans were left with no choices but to join the ranks of those in the diaspora.
If Africa’s brain trust has chosen to domicile itself in the West then surely the gaps greated can only be filled by those non-Africans who see opportunity where many of us see danger. The only question is whether the monopolisation of economic opportunities by the few with limited or no role models is necessarily healthy for Africa.
The role of citizens, money and power relationships in shaping Africa’s destiny have to form part of the great debates between and amongst us.
Who does Africa belong to? What are the obligations of African citizenship? What should be the role of the state in a developmental state? These are some of the questions that come to my mind in the quietness of my time when occassionally I reflect on the African condition and the seemingly helpless state of affairs that my continent of birth finds itsef in.
After more than fifty years of trying and US$600 billion worth of aid, the frontiers of poverty have not been reduced in the continent. Even those who argue that Africa should be fundamentally an exclusive home for blacks would agree that without the flow of aid funds, the ability of Africa to address its developmental challenges would be severely limited.
In many African conversations, a proposition is often made that development aid is not necessarily good for Africa. This proposition is frequently premised on the allegation that aid distorts the development choices of Africa and is often used to undermine African sovereignty.
We have seen many countries trying to assert their sovereignty notwithstanding their reliance on development assistance from external sources.
One of the key arguments used during the colonial era for denying blacks any civil rights was that Africans had no material interests to defend as would be required in any democratic order that is characterised by a contestation of values and interests of citizens.
The architecture of the colonial state was crafted in such a manner as to ensure that natives did not have any rights to assert in the economic market. The rule of law and property rights is only relevant if citizens have access to such rights. What is evident is that in both the colonial and post colonial states, the majority of African citizens have been denied access to the means to be free and yet in the later a notion of freedom has been accepted as being in existence.
The alienation of blacks from property rights was necessary in ensuring the exclusion of blacks in the democratic process for they had no rights to assert even if they were given the right to vote.
The post colonial state was expected to open the door for citizen engagement in civic and political affairs. It has often been said that in need freedom is latent and no person can expect to be free if he/she lives in someone’s house. Are African citizens freer today than during the colonial era? Do citizens really have a say in shaping their future?
The first address of power for blacks in a post colonial construction invariably becomes the state. Most of the people who assume state power tend to be less prepared for the jobs that they occupy to the extent that it becomes difficult for citizens to reclaim their sovereignty from career politicians who often are not prepared to relinguish power.
He who pays the piper often calls the tune. The state of the financial situation of Africa suggests that it would be naïve for Africa to deny its donors the right to interfere in the domestic affairs of the beneficiary states if development assistance is the life blood of such countries. Even overgrown babies who fail to secure their own independent financial resources cannot deny their benefactors the right to lecture them on lessons of life.
At some stage it is important for us to take responsibility for our own problems. Any state should derive its legitimacy from its citizens. Without tax payers the state cannot exist and it would be naïve for non-tax payers to claim more from a state that they constructively refuse to finance. The foundational principle of any state must be a recognition that without the sweat of individual citizens there can be no democratic constitutional order.
If African citizens were responsible for financing their own national budgets, I am convinced that no dictatorship would have been allowed to exist. Many households with single bread winners behave no different from donors. How many households in Africa behave in a democratic manner?
It is true that in many African states the only vote that counts is that of the people who count the votes. Citizens are too fragmented and disorganised to make their governments accountable.
In the absence of citizen participation on governance issues, most African states invariably become laboratories for intellectuals to experiment their development theories. If ever there was a continent populated by intellectual bureaucrats one would agree that Africa is one of the best endowed and yet the fruits are missing.
In any developmental process one needs role models and people who refuse to accept things the way they are but who constructively add their voices and actions to change. The last 50 years has seen Africa fail to raise the standards of living of its people while becoming increasingly dependent on foreign tax payers.
Many of us are often angry when we see Africa’s real tax payers i.e. the donors demanding accountability on the part of seemingly sovereign African states and yet fail to locate such anger in the broader context of our collective inability to take responsibility for our inaction and impotence.
Is it reasonable for any concerned donor to seek to make African states accountable for spending their funds? Some have said that it is not reasonable because the same donors were responsible for systematically exploiting African resources during the colonial era for which no compensation has been forthcoming. Using this argument, many would argue that Africa ought to demand aid from the developed countries and such countries should not interfere with the sovereignty of the beneficiary countries.
Naturally money plays a part in nation building and yet the construction of capital is a subject that has eluded many Africans. Our relationship with money ought to be refined and interrogated.
Those who have it in Africa choose to believe that they have it because they are smart. And those who have no money believe that the rich owe them something and their poverty is a creation of the rich. The rich often are intimidated not to participate in politics or choose not to be engaged in the conversations that should define the future of the continent. Invariably their opinions are largely missing and to the extent that blacks and money are soon parted leaving whites and non-Africans holding the purse of Africa, it is the poor who have the burden of deciding who governs Africa while the rich have the luxury of being protected by the people elected by the poor.
Who then is responsible for the unacceptable African condition? Surely we must and should all take responsibility for allowing some African states to become basket cases.
We have chosen to make the responsibility of changing the African condition someone else’s and not ours. As individuals we have the money to change Africa but have chosen to create islands of affluence in the midst of an ocean of poverty. In any economic collapse it is those people with more to lose who should look at themselves and take responsibility for the loss rather than blame those who have nothing to lose.
The raw materials of African politics will remain the poor who should have the same inalienable right to decide through electoral processes who should govern them. There is no system devised by man in a democratic order that gives the rich more voting rights than the poor.
Given the alienation of the majority from the means to be free, it is not surprising that the choices that are made by many African citizens are not informed by facts. The state in most African countries invariably becomes monopolized by the wickedly wise who see in ignorance a powerful weapon for entrenching themselves in power.
Citizen participation in the political process is regarded by the powerful as treason in most African states. Many of us who call ourselves intellectuals often become the roadblocks to progress and enlightenment of the majority.
We have a tendency to blame our leaders for creating the African condition and fail to look at ourselves critically in terms of what we have failed to do in helping to define and shape the destiny of the continent.
We all may not agree on whom Africa belongs to but I believe that it is important that we begin a conversation on identity, heritage and legacy. I am conforted by the fact that in as much as I may think globally I am compelled to act locally. Nation states will naturally take longer to wither notwithstanding the pursuasive arguments of globalisation. It would be unthinkable, for instance, to have a black Chief Justice in China.
Equally, no matter how economically retarded Africans may look, it is a fact that Africans will have to take care of their problems. The law of gravity has many lessons for anyone who believes that non whites cannot be African because in the final analysis a democratic constitutional order threatens the minority and yet in Africa the majority feels perpetually threatened by the minority. How many of us have a tendency of blaming white people for our own inadequacies.
Many founding fathers of post colonial Africa have embraced the state as a super persona that can solve all problems forgeting that the state is nothing but a creation of organised citizens. The state can only function smoothly if citizens take responsibility for their actions. No development can take place in the virtual world but has to be anchored by the initiative of citizens.
I hope that in my lifetime a day will arrive when Africans in their various shapes realise that there can never be a wrong time to take ownership of their lives. In many countries, evil men and women have stolen the future of nation states to the extent that many rational and patriotic Africans were left with no choices but to join the ranks of those in the diaspora.
If Africa’s brain trust has chosen to domicile itself in the West then surely the gaps greated can only be filled by those non-Africans who see opportunity where many of us see danger. The only question is whether the monopolisation of economic opportunities by the few with limited or no role models is necessarily healthy for Africa.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Africa 2008: Citizens and Power – The Zimbabwean Case Study
Political power in any democratic and constitutional order is held by the holders of sovereignty. It is true that without following a principle of containing and balancing legislative, executive, and judiciary powers, there can be no freedom and no protection against the abuse of power.
The separation of power principle between the three branches of the state is so fundamental to the protection of any constitutional order. It is generally agreed that any atmosphere where any of the branches of the state can operate with excessive limitation from others and one branch can rule out the decisions of the other branches necessarily undermines the principle of sovereignty and the rule of law.
Africa is a challenged continent in so far as locating political power in the context of the wishes and aspirations of citizens.
In post colonial Africa, sovereignty has been alienated from citizens and the holders of political power have generally assumed a separate and distinct existence notwithstanding the fact that occasionally they submit themselves to elections where outcomes are generally predetermined and manipulated.
To a large extent the institutions of government in post colonial Africa were inherited from the colonial state. In the colonial state, citizens had no say in how they were governed and the destiny of the colonial state was shaped by the settlers with no input from the governed majority.
What is ironic is that even the worst dictators in Africa believe that their actions are in the national interest. Citizens of Africa were alienated from political power in the colonial era and have largely surrendered their sovereignty in the post colonial state to their elected representatives often with no checks and balances.
The foundation of any democratic and constitutional order must be the location of the address of power in the hands of citizens and the ability of citizens to ensure that their governments are accountable and operate transparently. Regrettably, the experiences of many post colonial African states confirm that political power has been hijacked by manipulative and power hungry elites to the extent that citizens are no longer able to assert their rights freely.
The case of Zimbabwe is an interesting one and provides a useful case study for many emerging nations. Even Raila Odinga has come to the conclusion that President Mugabe has set a bad example for Africa on how state power can perpetuate itself using seemingly democratic instruments like elections.
The context in which President Kibaki has been re-elected has many parallels in Africa and it is not unusual in Africa that after elections the only hope for citizens asserting their political rights is through external mediation efforts and it is extremely difficult and dangerous for citizens to attempt to bring to book, criminal politicians who derive their legitimacy from stolen elections.
Ordinarily, criminals have no locus standi to negotiate their future let alone to participate in processes while they are enjoying the fruits of their criminal conduct. However, in Africa it has become acceptable that power can be stolen from the people and the beneficiaries of such practices can impose their will on innocent citizens who have no internal capacity to reclaim their power.
President Mugabe has rightly or wrongly maintained the position that at all material time, the sovereignty of Zimbabwe has belonged to the citizens and that any regime change agenda that has not been informed by the wishes or aspirations of the people of Zimbabwe was bound to fail.
It is true that President Mugabe has presided over a fast decaying economy but has never missed an election suggesting that the people of Zimbabwe must be supportive of policies that have led to the increase of the frontiers of poverty.
If there is no serious domestic opposition to bad governance and citizens of Zimbabwe have for the last 28 years failed to come up with a mechanism of making their government accountable, can one safely conclude that it is a demonstration of the support President Mugabe enjoys from the people?
After 28 years of independence, can one conclude that the actions of the executive, legislature and judiciary of Zimbabwe are consistent with the expectations of the citizens?
Zimbabweans and non-Zimbabweans have complained about the centralisation of power in the hands of the President to the extent that the constitutional order that is expected in a democratic Zimbabwe has been undermined.
Any head of a starving household cannot claim to be a good provider. The state of the Zimbabwean economy has been well documented but it is clearly evident that President Mugabe’s supporters are not convinced that he bears any responsibility for the collapse of the economy. Is it the case that citizens have accepted that they have no power to change their own circumstances or they are afraid of the people who have stolen their birth right?
President Mugabe would not agree that he is a thief and any suggestion that his administration is now polluted by a gang of thieves would easily be dismissed.
Many have seen Charamba, the chief government propagandist, using the new government propaganda machine, Al Jazeera, making allegations that Zimbabwe continues to be a victim of imperialism. Mr. Supa Mandiwanzira, the correspondent for Al Jazeera in Zimbabwe, would like the world to believe that the problems of Zimbabwe are externally generated and the people of Zimbabwe are fools.
The perception that Zimbabweans have gotten a government they deserve is well founded for how can any rational person explain why it has been impossible for Zimbabweans to identify correctly their problem and deal with it. The manner in which infantile disorder underpinned by childish propaganda has taken root in Zimbabwe confirms that there is something fundamentally wrong in the psyche of Zimbabweans.
Charamba and Gono have emerged as the two critical defenders of what has been generally described as a failed state. Although Charamba takes the position that people of Zimbabwe are inherently incapable of thinking and acting independently with obviously with the exception of President Mugabe and his loyal troops, Gono poses a more significant threat to the constitutional order through the opaque quasi fiscal activities.
Gono is the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) and in any democratic order such a bank would be an organ of state and not a threat to democracy. The RBZ should ordinarily operate as a citizens’ bank and a repository of their trust and confidence in the integrity of the financial system.
Citizens elected their representatives to look after their interests and yet one cannot say that the Parliament of Zimbabwe operates as a house of assembly. It is evident that the house of assembly has been transformed into the house of MDC and ZANU-PF and the sovereignty of the people has been sufficiently undermined to the extent that national interests no longer occupy the minds of parliamentarians.
If the legislative agenda was informed by national interests, Gono would by now be in prison. What President Mugabe has skilfully done is to make Gono the ultimate custodian of the nation through the systematic castration of parliament. The parliament of Zimbabwe is now an agent of the executive and there may be no merit in having parliamentary elections if Gono remains a Governor of the RBZ.
Since Gono’s appointment as Governor of the RBZ, Zimbabweans have seen the erosion of the role of the Parliament and Cabinet. What Gono thinks prevails and sadly the people of Zimbabwe are the ultimate losers. There is no better example of demonstrating how helpless Zimbabweans have been reduced to than the current cash crisis and the never ending foreign currency problems.
At the ZANU-PF congress, Gono threatened to expose the so-called cash barons instead of telling the nation that he was the mastermind of the destruction of the formal economy. He invited himself to the Budget and Finance committee that was chaired by Butau who like Makamba and others have been externalised by Gono.
It has now been reported that Gono will appear before the parliamentary committee next week on Monday and it is generally expected that he will provide a list of the so-called cash barons. However, Gono finds himself under siege after being exposed in a court of law as the real cash baron who has regrettably manipulated the whole nation into believing that the enemy is from without and not from within.
What will Gono say? Will he or will he not reveal the names? What is the role of the RBZ destroying a functioning economic system? Is President Mugabe part of the plot? These are some of the questions that must surely be in people’s minds.
However, if I was a member of the parliamentary committee what kind of questions would I pose for Gono? The following would surely be on the top of my list:
1. Mr. Gono: Are you aware that the only mechanism for allocating state resources is the budget under the oversight of parliament? If so, how do you explain the role of the RBZ in allocating resources through quasi fiscal activities in a democratic order?
2. Please can you provide a detailed list of all the transactions that have been funded by the RBZ on behalf of the government? How were such transactions approved? What was the role of the cabinet in approving such transactions? How are the transactions monitored? How are they reflected in the budget? What is the parliament’s role in approving and monitoring such transaction?
3. Do you agree that the role of the RBZ has the effect of undermining the role of parliament?
4. You have justified your role in placing legitimate government expenditures under the control of the RBZ on the basis that there is a sanctions regime. If this is the case, do you believe that democracy should be suspended until the sanctions are lifted? What should be the role of the parliament?
5. Allegations have been made that shelf companies like Flatwater, Smoothnest, AMG Global Nominees, and others have been used by the RBZ as fronts in various transactions that are patently illegal. Please provide details of who approved such transactions? What, if any, was the role of the government?
6. We now know that about 102 tractors were to be procured by Flatwater as an agent of the RBZ. To the extent that the tractors were to be owned by the government, do you agree that the role of the RBZ by taking over the role of the relevant government agency undermines the constitutional order? Who approved the purchase of the tractors without coming to parliament for resources to be allocated in the budget? What was the exchange rate implied in the transactions? Is it true that Z$7 trillion was deposited into the account of Flatwater without any due diligence about Flatwater’s financial status? If it is true that the tractors were to be imported, can we say that the RBZ knew that the Z$7 trillion was to be converted into foreign currency at the black market rate? If not why did the RBZ not deposit the equivalent at the official exchange rate into the account of Flatwater?
I am sure that there are many questions that will arise but what is important is that the parliamentarians realise that the hopes of Zimbabweans lie with them in exposing how the state is now operating and why change of direction has to be the litmus test in the March 2008 elections. Any outcome that will leave Gono in charge and his political masters ultimately in control will contribute to the destruction of what remains functioning in Zimbabwe. Yesterday it was Makamba, today it is Butau and tomorrow it could be anyone of us.
The stakes are high and naturally it is fair to expect that the Budget and Finance committee members will rise to the occasion. If Gono is exposed, it is evident that his political masters will take note that the people of Zimbabwe have finally taken ownership of their power.
The separation of power principle between the three branches of the state is so fundamental to the protection of any constitutional order. It is generally agreed that any atmosphere where any of the branches of the state can operate with excessive limitation from others and one branch can rule out the decisions of the other branches necessarily undermines the principle of sovereignty and the rule of law.
Africa is a challenged continent in so far as locating political power in the context of the wishes and aspirations of citizens.
In post colonial Africa, sovereignty has been alienated from citizens and the holders of political power have generally assumed a separate and distinct existence notwithstanding the fact that occasionally they submit themselves to elections where outcomes are generally predetermined and manipulated.
To a large extent the institutions of government in post colonial Africa were inherited from the colonial state. In the colonial state, citizens had no say in how they were governed and the destiny of the colonial state was shaped by the settlers with no input from the governed majority.
What is ironic is that even the worst dictators in Africa believe that their actions are in the national interest. Citizens of Africa were alienated from political power in the colonial era and have largely surrendered their sovereignty in the post colonial state to their elected representatives often with no checks and balances.
The foundation of any democratic and constitutional order must be the location of the address of power in the hands of citizens and the ability of citizens to ensure that their governments are accountable and operate transparently. Regrettably, the experiences of many post colonial African states confirm that political power has been hijacked by manipulative and power hungry elites to the extent that citizens are no longer able to assert their rights freely.
The case of Zimbabwe is an interesting one and provides a useful case study for many emerging nations. Even Raila Odinga has come to the conclusion that President Mugabe has set a bad example for Africa on how state power can perpetuate itself using seemingly democratic instruments like elections.
The context in which President Kibaki has been re-elected has many parallels in Africa and it is not unusual in Africa that after elections the only hope for citizens asserting their political rights is through external mediation efforts and it is extremely difficult and dangerous for citizens to attempt to bring to book, criminal politicians who derive their legitimacy from stolen elections.
Ordinarily, criminals have no locus standi to negotiate their future let alone to participate in processes while they are enjoying the fruits of their criminal conduct. However, in Africa it has become acceptable that power can be stolen from the people and the beneficiaries of such practices can impose their will on innocent citizens who have no internal capacity to reclaim their power.
President Mugabe has rightly or wrongly maintained the position that at all material time, the sovereignty of Zimbabwe has belonged to the citizens and that any regime change agenda that has not been informed by the wishes or aspirations of the people of Zimbabwe was bound to fail.
It is true that President Mugabe has presided over a fast decaying economy but has never missed an election suggesting that the people of Zimbabwe must be supportive of policies that have led to the increase of the frontiers of poverty.
If there is no serious domestic opposition to bad governance and citizens of Zimbabwe have for the last 28 years failed to come up with a mechanism of making their government accountable, can one safely conclude that it is a demonstration of the support President Mugabe enjoys from the people?
After 28 years of independence, can one conclude that the actions of the executive, legislature and judiciary of Zimbabwe are consistent with the expectations of the citizens?
Zimbabweans and non-Zimbabweans have complained about the centralisation of power in the hands of the President to the extent that the constitutional order that is expected in a democratic Zimbabwe has been undermined.
Any head of a starving household cannot claim to be a good provider. The state of the Zimbabwean economy has been well documented but it is clearly evident that President Mugabe’s supporters are not convinced that he bears any responsibility for the collapse of the economy. Is it the case that citizens have accepted that they have no power to change their own circumstances or they are afraid of the people who have stolen their birth right?
President Mugabe would not agree that he is a thief and any suggestion that his administration is now polluted by a gang of thieves would easily be dismissed.
Many have seen Charamba, the chief government propagandist, using the new government propaganda machine, Al Jazeera, making allegations that Zimbabwe continues to be a victim of imperialism. Mr. Supa Mandiwanzira, the correspondent for Al Jazeera in Zimbabwe, would like the world to believe that the problems of Zimbabwe are externally generated and the people of Zimbabwe are fools.
The perception that Zimbabweans have gotten a government they deserve is well founded for how can any rational person explain why it has been impossible for Zimbabweans to identify correctly their problem and deal with it. The manner in which infantile disorder underpinned by childish propaganda has taken root in Zimbabwe confirms that there is something fundamentally wrong in the psyche of Zimbabweans.
Charamba and Gono have emerged as the two critical defenders of what has been generally described as a failed state. Although Charamba takes the position that people of Zimbabwe are inherently incapable of thinking and acting independently with obviously with the exception of President Mugabe and his loyal troops, Gono poses a more significant threat to the constitutional order through the opaque quasi fiscal activities.
Gono is the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) and in any democratic order such a bank would be an organ of state and not a threat to democracy. The RBZ should ordinarily operate as a citizens’ bank and a repository of their trust and confidence in the integrity of the financial system.
Citizens elected their representatives to look after their interests and yet one cannot say that the Parliament of Zimbabwe operates as a house of assembly. It is evident that the house of assembly has been transformed into the house of MDC and ZANU-PF and the sovereignty of the people has been sufficiently undermined to the extent that national interests no longer occupy the minds of parliamentarians.
If the legislative agenda was informed by national interests, Gono would by now be in prison. What President Mugabe has skilfully done is to make Gono the ultimate custodian of the nation through the systematic castration of parliament. The parliament of Zimbabwe is now an agent of the executive and there may be no merit in having parliamentary elections if Gono remains a Governor of the RBZ.
Since Gono’s appointment as Governor of the RBZ, Zimbabweans have seen the erosion of the role of the Parliament and Cabinet. What Gono thinks prevails and sadly the people of Zimbabwe are the ultimate losers. There is no better example of demonstrating how helpless Zimbabweans have been reduced to than the current cash crisis and the never ending foreign currency problems.
At the ZANU-PF congress, Gono threatened to expose the so-called cash barons instead of telling the nation that he was the mastermind of the destruction of the formal economy. He invited himself to the Budget and Finance committee that was chaired by Butau who like Makamba and others have been externalised by Gono.
It has now been reported that Gono will appear before the parliamentary committee next week on Monday and it is generally expected that he will provide a list of the so-called cash barons. However, Gono finds himself under siege after being exposed in a court of law as the real cash baron who has regrettably manipulated the whole nation into believing that the enemy is from without and not from within.
What will Gono say? Will he or will he not reveal the names? What is the role of the RBZ destroying a functioning economic system? Is President Mugabe part of the plot? These are some of the questions that must surely be in people’s minds.
However, if I was a member of the parliamentary committee what kind of questions would I pose for Gono? The following would surely be on the top of my list:
1. Mr. Gono: Are you aware that the only mechanism for allocating state resources is the budget under the oversight of parliament? If so, how do you explain the role of the RBZ in allocating resources through quasi fiscal activities in a democratic order?
2. Please can you provide a detailed list of all the transactions that have been funded by the RBZ on behalf of the government? How were such transactions approved? What was the role of the cabinet in approving such transactions? How are the transactions monitored? How are they reflected in the budget? What is the parliament’s role in approving and monitoring such transaction?
3. Do you agree that the role of the RBZ has the effect of undermining the role of parliament?
4. You have justified your role in placing legitimate government expenditures under the control of the RBZ on the basis that there is a sanctions regime. If this is the case, do you believe that democracy should be suspended until the sanctions are lifted? What should be the role of the parliament?
5. Allegations have been made that shelf companies like Flatwater, Smoothnest, AMG Global Nominees, and others have been used by the RBZ as fronts in various transactions that are patently illegal. Please provide details of who approved such transactions? What, if any, was the role of the government?
6. We now know that about 102 tractors were to be procured by Flatwater as an agent of the RBZ. To the extent that the tractors were to be owned by the government, do you agree that the role of the RBZ by taking over the role of the relevant government agency undermines the constitutional order? Who approved the purchase of the tractors without coming to parliament for resources to be allocated in the budget? What was the exchange rate implied in the transactions? Is it true that Z$7 trillion was deposited into the account of Flatwater without any due diligence about Flatwater’s financial status? If it is true that the tractors were to be imported, can we say that the RBZ knew that the Z$7 trillion was to be converted into foreign currency at the black market rate? If not why did the RBZ not deposit the equivalent at the official exchange rate into the account of Flatwater?
I am sure that there are many questions that will arise but what is important is that the parliamentarians realise that the hopes of Zimbabweans lie with them in exposing how the state is now operating and why change of direction has to be the litmus test in the March 2008 elections. Any outcome that will leave Gono in charge and his political masters ultimately in control will contribute to the destruction of what remains functioning in Zimbabwe. Yesterday it was Makamba, today it is Butau and tomorrow it could be anyone of us.
The stakes are high and naturally it is fair to expect that the Budget and Finance committee members will rise to the occasion. If Gono is exposed, it is evident that his political masters will take note that the people of Zimbabwe have finally taken ownership of their power.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Obama’s audacity of hope and lessons for Africa
After two primaries, Obama has won 16 delegates compared to Senator Clinton’s 9. The results of the New Hampshire primary have demonstrated the resilience of Obama and underlying the hype following the elections is the undeniable fact that Clinton and Obama ended up in New Hampshire with the same number of delegates i.e. 9 each making it a draw.
Even if O
bama may not make it as the candidate, the politics of America will never be the same.
What Obama represents to America and to all global citizens who are trapped in seemingly hopeless situations is already evident in the courage and determination of the marginalised to invest in meaningful change politics.
When Barack Obama stepped up to the podium at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, few in the world let alone outside his home state knew anything about him. His place in American history is not only secure but inspirational. His message is so basic and compelling. It captures the imagination of anyone who cares about life and the importance of positive activism.
Obama has entered national politics at a defining moment in American history when the names of both the incumbent President and his deputy are not on the ballot box. Accordingly, a new President will definitely be in the White House next year.
Even Americans are looking for change at a time when the future of the world is so insecure and uncertain. What kind of change will deliver the promise is the question that Americans will have to answer. However, if for instance, Obama was a Zimbabwean; his presence on the political scene would have been classified as subversive and counter-revolutionary.
What makes America unique is the mere fact that the unlikely can happen and citizens can express their political choices without any fear that the state machinery can be used against them.
Contemporary Africa was born from the womb of colonial oppression characterised by an atmosphere not any different from what gave rise to the civil rights movement in America.
Obama has been described as the iPhone of American politics. He is a phenomenon and a rare political brand representing the best in humanity. His book, The Audacity of Hope, is a must read for political practitioners seeking to help shape the future and provides an intellectual foundation for any campaign that is targeted at direct citizen participation.
The importance of a kind of “absolute” conviction to produce important change cannot be overstated when a nation is at the crossroads of history and choices on direction have to be made. The hard and cold facts of Africa remind us that only idealists in the mould of Obama who recognise that it is important for a generation trapped in the politics of yesterday to concede nothing without a fight.
Many of us have resigned to accept that the responsibility for shaping the destiny of Africa is not ours and yet we naively believe that someone remotely connected to us will invest in the change that we want to see. We often retreat into the comfort zone where it is easy to pontificate and leave the deliberation of constitutional and foundational principles of our emerging democracies as the luxury of the powerful.
We rarely see primary engines of economic progress i.e. businesspersons having the courage to say what they think and invariably the marketplace of ideas that inform change is often populated by people described as extremists, cranks, agitators, saboteurs, and the unreasonable.
The kind of philosophical openness and self-reflexivity offered by Obama provides an excellent role model for Africans who have become prisoners in their own post colonial democratic construction that is characterised by fear and not hope.
Obama has demonstrated that in hope lies opportunities for change. No matter how difficult the moment is and how uncertain the future is there is hope in humanity. Yes, hope is audacious and in the final analysis it is the greatest gift that God has given to mankind and should form the foundation of Africa’s democratic order.
Although Africans in the majority subscribe to the republican political ideology, life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are luxuries that citizens trapped in dictatorships of various forms are denied. Notwithstanding, even some of the most brutal of African dictators still have a residual commitment to democratic values in so far as allowing citizens to vote.
Yes, we have seen citizens triumph using the power of the vote. Even the improbable has in some African countries become possible. In such environments, hope can form the basis of energising the majority to invest in the change that they believe in. Ultimately hope is a belief in things not seen.
Even those who doubt Obama’s chances to become the first person of colour as the President of the USA would agree that he has energised Americans to believe once again that there are better days ahead.
Having written a lot on Zimbabwean issues, I believe that better days lie ahead and the present cannot be the order of the day. With less than 90 days to elections, Zimbabweans have no time to waste if they are to reclaim their future. Zimbabweans have a righteous wind at their back and cannot afford to leave their future in the hands of third parties.
Zimbabwe is at the crossroads and right choices have to be made if the challenges that the country faces are to be met. Democrats have Obama to lead the charge and it cannot be said that President Mugabe offers the change that Zimbabweans believe in.
It is not too late to identify an Obama for Zimbabwe and I have no doubt that many exist but who is the one. Could Simba Makoni be the one? Would he have the Obama courage? Could you be the one? Only time will tell but we have work to do to convince the Zimbabwean Obama that he is not alone and we are willing to walk the talk.
Even if O
bama may not make it as the candidate, the politics of America will never be the same.What Obama represents to America and to all global citizens who are trapped in seemingly hopeless situations is already evident in the courage and determination of the marginalised to invest in meaningful change politics.
When Barack Obama stepped up to the podium at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, few in the world let alone outside his home state knew anything about him. His place in American history is not only secure but inspirational. His message is so basic and compelling. It captures the imagination of anyone who cares about life and the importance of positive activism.
Obama has entered national politics at a defining moment in American history when the names of both the incumbent President and his deputy are not on the ballot box. Accordingly, a new President will definitely be in the White House next year.
Even Americans are looking for change at a time when the future of the world is so insecure and uncertain. What kind of change will deliver the promise is the question that Americans will have to answer. However, if for instance, Obama was a Zimbabwean; his presence on the political scene would have been classified as subversive and counter-revolutionary.
What makes America unique is the mere fact that the unlikely can happen and citizens can express their political choices without any fear that the state machinery can be used against them.
Contemporary Africa was born from the womb of colonial oppression characterised by an atmosphere not any different from what gave rise to the civil rights movement in America.
Obama has been described as the iPhone of American politics. He is a phenomenon and a rare political brand representing the best in humanity. His book, The Audacity of Hope, is a must read for political practitioners seeking to help shape the future and provides an intellectual foundation for any campaign that is targeted at direct citizen participation.
The importance of a kind of “absolute” conviction to produce important change cannot be overstated when a nation is at the crossroads of history and choices on direction have to be made. The hard and cold facts of Africa remind us that only idealists in the mould of Obama who recognise that it is important for a generation trapped in the politics of yesterday to concede nothing without a fight.
Many of us have resigned to accept that the responsibility for shaping the destiny of Africa is not ours and yet we naively believe that someone remotely connected to us will invest in the change that we want to see. We often retreat into the comfort zone where it is easy to pontificate and leave the deliberation of constitutional and foundational principles of our emerging democracies as the luxury of the powerful.
We rarely see primary engines of economic progress i.e. businesspersons having the courage to say what they think and invariably the marketplace of ideas that inform change is often populated by people described as extremists, cranks, agitators, saboteurs, and the unreasonable.
The kind of philosophical openness and self-reflexivity offered by Obama provides an excellent role model for Africans who have become prisoners in their own post colonial democratic construction that is characterised by fear and not hope.
Obama has demonstrated that in hope lies opportunities for change. No matter how difficult the moment is and how uncertain the future is there is hope in humanity. Yes, hope is audacious and in the final analysis it is the greatest gift that God has given to mankind and should form the foundation of Africa’s democratic order.
Although Africans in the majority subscribe to the republican political ideology, life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are luxuries that citizens trapped in dictatorships of various forms are denied. Notwithstanding, even some of the most brutal of African dictators still have a residual commitment to democratic values in so far as allowing citizens to vote.
Yes, we have seen citizens triumph using the power of the vote. Even the improbable has in some African countries become possible. In such environments, hope can form the basis of energising the majority to invest in the change that they believe in. Ultimately hope is a belief in things not seen.
Even those who doubt Obama’s chances to become the first person of colour as the President of the USA would agree that he has energised Americans to believe once again that there are better days ahead.
Having written a lot on Zimbabwean issues, I believe that better days lie ahead and the present cannot be the order of the day. With less than 90 days to elections, Zimbabweans have no time to waste if they are to reclaim their future. Zimbabweans have a righteous wind at their back and cannot afford to leave their future in the hands of third parties.
Zimbabwe is at the crossroads and right choices have to be made if the challenges that the country faces are to be met. Democrats have Obama to lead the charge and it cannot be said that President Mugabe offers the change that Zimbabweans believe in.
It is not too late to identify an Obama for Zimbabwe and I have no doubt that many exist but who is the one. Could Simba Makoni be the one? Would he have the Obama courage? Could you be the one? Only time will tell but we have work to do to convince the Zimbabwean Obama that he is not alone and we are willing to walk the talk.
If Zuma & Shaik are guilty, who is innocent?
The relationship between the petty bourgeoisie and political elites in a post colonial state is a subject that requires critical interrogation not only because it informs the kind of democratic order and political morality that is necessary to push back the frontiers of poverty itself largely a legacy of the colonial state.
The end of apartheid in South Africa ushered a new era in which political power was transferred to the majority of the citizens through their elected representatives. Republicanism formed a foundational basis of the post apartheid state underpinned by a government of laws and not of men.
Fourteen years into the post apartheid construction it is evident that no serious conversations has taken place in South Africa to deal with the issue of what sort of values and behaviour by the citizens is necessary for the republic to survive and flourish. If there is anything that President Mbeki and Mr. Zuma agree on today is that ANC should invest in political education as a matter of urgency.
It is not accidental, therefore, that the most powerful person in South Africa today, Zuma, finds himself on the wrong side of the law. Zuma is alleged to have been bribed by his friend and financial advisor, Shabil Shaik, who has already been convicted in exchange for discouraging the 2001 arms probe conducted by Parliament and generally in facilitating Shaik’s deals with the government.
The choice of republicanism as an ideology for governing the post apartheid state with an emphasis on liberty, rule by the people and the civic virtue practiced by citizens was informed by a universal consensus that dictatorship, aristocracy and oligarchy would not help advance the cause of nation building.
By accepting a republican form of government, South Africans agreed to put a premium on civil virtue and opposition to corruption. Republicanism is generally perceived to be incompatible with office holders using public power for personal gain.
There are many unresolved problems in South Africa, but the Zuma/Shaik, Selebi/Agliotti, Winnie Mandela, Tony Yengeni, and many other post apartheid corruption cases are far too many for us to pause to critically examine issues related to political morality and foundational principles of a post colonial state.
Is it the case that Africans have assimilated a political ideology founded on foreign morality with an in-built poison pill to eliminate popular African leaders against a background of inherited class relationships founded on a generally corrupt relationship between colonial political elites and business?
What should be the relationship between a post colonial state and emerging black business in Africa? Who should the state be accountable to? Who should benefit from state business? How are the state actors largely drawn from historically economically disenfranchised majority to be economically stabilised if zero tolerance to corruption is a key foundational principle of a post colonial state?
The South African miracle that has been universally applauded was founded on forgiveness and acceptance by both villains and victims that it would not serve any purpose to seek to advance the national democratic revolution by looking backwards.
Indeed, the criminality of apartheid and the consequential assignment of benefits exclusively on racial lines were accepted as given and Shaik’s apartheid equivalents were equally forgiven and are today generally perceived to have acquired their wealth legitimately.
If colonial history was to be interrogated critically it would not be surprising to establish that the relationship between state and non-state business actors was generally corrupt. What is ironic is that the fiercest post colonial critics of corruption tend to be the very beneficiaries and successors of the colonial system.
The menace of corruption to development is well acknowledged and it would be wrong to argue that corruption should be condoned as a necessary evil in any nation building experiment.
However, it is not surprising that the culprits of post colonial Africa tend to be black and no serious questions are then asked by citizens how they would expect their generally financially challenged representatives in the state to balance their books if it is accepted that the object of colonialism was to place the majority blacks in a financially precarious position.
It would not be considered cynical to argue that a blind acceptance of republicanism in a post colonial state has the effect of distorting political morality. Citizens expect a corrupt free administration and yet they acknowledge that their political and bureaucratic elites have no independent economic means to reduce the risk of parasitic behaviour of the order displayed in the alleged relationship between Zuma and Shaik on the one hand and Selebi and Agliotti on the other.
It is generally agreed that corruption is endemic in all governments, and that it is not peculiar to any continent, region and ethnic group. It cuts across faiths, religious denominations and political systems and affects both young and old, man and woman alike.
Corruption is found in democratic and dictatorial politics; feudal, capitalist and socialist economies. Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist cultures are equally bedevilled by corruption.
And corrupt practices did not begin today; the history is as old as the world. Ancient civilizations have traces of widespread illegality and corruption.
Zuma was first charged with corruption following Shaik's trial and the case was thrown out of Pietermaritzburg High Court last year over the state's delays in producing evidence.
Zuma was relieved of his duties following the conviction of Shaik although he was not given an opportunity to defend himself in the Shaik trial.
Unlike Selebi who has been given granted an extended leave of absence, Zuma was thrown into what was thought to be political wilderness to defend himself without the benefit of any pay.
What has emerged now is that when President Mbeki fired Zuma, the state did not even have sufficient evidence to prosecute the case. It was then necessary for the state to raid Zuma and his associates to obtain new evidence, in a manner that has been challenged as unconstitutional, that the state is now using to allege that during the period 1995 through 2005, Zuma received 4 million rand in corrupt payments from Shaik notwithstanding the fact that such evidence was not part of the evidence used to convict Shaik.
Shaik, who is serving a 15-year sentence for fraud and corruption, was found guilty of seeking a 500,000-rand-a-year bribe from French defence company Thales on behalf of Zuma and not for the payments made spanning over a ten-year period. If Zuma is guilty of receiving payments from Shaik, a risk exists that all business persons who have made any payments to their friends in government will end up facing the same fate.
It has now been accepted that to correct the historical economic injustice created by apartheid, blacks should be given preferential access to government business and yet in doing so the spectre of being accused of corruption rests on all emerging businessmen who because of history invariably look to the state as the primary source of business and capital accumulation.
Many of the emerging South African businessmen were colleagues during the anti-apartheid struggle with the political elites and the friendships forged are now being called to question and if the Zuma standard is applied, I am not sure how many of the politicians in South Africa would pass the test.
Any payment made to a post-apartheid political friend by a business person attracts with it the risk of being perceived as a generally corrupt transaction. It is incumbent upon the beneficiary of such payments to disclose to the state the true nature of the payment and the underlying relationship. However, it is not the case that in South Africa all politicians can claim that over the last 14 years they have not received cash and non-cash payments from their friends in government.
The end of apartheid in South Africa ushered a new era in which political power was transferred to the majority of the citizens through their elected representatives. Republicanism formed a foundational basis of the post apartheid state underpinned by a government of laws and not of men.
Fourteen years into the post apartheid construction it is evident that no serious conversations has taken place in South Africa to deal with the issue of what sort of values and behaviour by the citizens is necessary for the republic to survive and flourish. If there is anything that President Mbeki and Mr. Zuma agree on today is that ANC should invest in political education as a matter of urgency.
It is not accidental, therefore, that the most powerful person in South Africa today, Zuma, finds himself on the wrong side of the law. Zuma is alleged to have been bribed by his friend and financial advisor, Shabil Shaik, who has already been convicted in exchange for discouraging the 2001 arms probe conducted by Parliament and generally in facilitating Shaik’s deals with the government.
The choice of republicanism as an ideology for governing the post apartheid state with an emphasis on liberty, rule by the people and the civic virtue practiced by citizens was informed by a universal consensus that dictatorship, aristocracy and oligarchy would not help advance the cause of nation building.
By accepting a republican form of government, South Africans agreed to put a premium on civil virtue and opposition to corruption. Republicanism is generally perceived to be incompatible with office holders using public power for personal gain.
There are many unresolved problems in South Africa, but the Zuma/Shaik, Selebi/Agliotti, Winnie Mandela, Tony Yengeni, and many other post apartheid corruption cases are far too many for us to pause to critically examine issues related to political morality and foundational principles of a post colonial state.
Is it the case that Africans have assimilated a political ideology founded on foreign morality with an in-built poison pill to eliminate popular African leaders against a background of inherited class relationships founded on a generally corrupt relationship between colonial political elites and business?
What should be the relationship between a post colonial state and emerging black business in Africa? Who should the state be accountable to? Who should benefit from state business? How are the state actors largely drawn from historically economically disenfranchised majority to be economically stabilised if zero tolerance to corruption is a key foundational principle of a post colonial state?
The South African miracle that has been universally applauded was founded on forgiveness and acceptance by both villains and victims that it would not serve any purpose to seek to advance the national democratic revolution by looking backwards.
Indeed, the criminality of apartheid and the consequential assignment of benefits exclusively on racial lines were accepted as given and Shaik’s apartheid equivalents were equally forgiven and are today generally perceived to have acquired their wealth legitimately.
If colonial history was to be interrogated critically it would not be surprising to establish that the relationship between state and non-state business actors was generally corrupt. What is ironic is that the fiercest post colonial critics of corruption tend to be the very beneficiaries and successors of the colonial system.
The menace of corruption to development is well acknowledged and it would be wrong to argue that corruption should be condoned as a necessary evil in any nation building experiment.
However, it is not surprising that the culprits of post colonial Africa tend to be black and no serious questions are then asked by citizens how they would expect their generally financially challenged representatives in the state to balance their books if it is accepted that the object of colonialism was to place the majority blacks in a financially precarious position.
It would not be considered cynical to argue that a blind acceptance of republicanism in a post colonial state has the effect of distorting political morality. Citizens expect a corrupt free administration and yet they acknowledge that their political and bureaucratic elites have no independent economic means to reduce the risk of parasitic behaviour of the order displayed in the alleged relationship between Zuma and Shaik on the one hand and Selebi and Agliotti on the other.
It is generally agreed that corruption is endemic in all governments, and that it is not peculiar to any continent, region and ethnic group. It cuts across faiths, religious denominations and political systems and affects both young and old, man and woman alike.
Corruption is found in democratic and dictatorial politics; feudal, capitalist and socialist economies. Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist cultures are equally bedevilled by corruption.
And corrupt practices did not begin today; the history is as old as the world. Ancient civilizations have traces of widespread illegality and corruption.
Zuma was first charged with corruption following Shaik's trial and the case was thrown out of Pietermaritzburg High Court last year over the state's delays in producing evidence.
Zuma was relieved of his duties following the conviction of Shaik although he was not given an opportunity to defend himself in the Shaik trial.
Unlike Selebi who has been given granted an extended leave of absence, Zuma was thrown into what was thought to be political wilderness to defend himself without the benefit of any pay.
What has emerged now is that when President Mbeki fired Zuma, the state did not even have sufficient evidence to prosecute the case. It was then necessary for the state to raid Zuma and his associates to obtain new evidence, in a manner that has been challenged as unconstitutional, that the state is now using to allege that during the period 1995 through 2005, Zuma received 4 million rand in corrupt payments from Shaik notwithstanding the fact that such evidence was not part of the evidence used to convict Shaik.
Shaik, who is serving a 15-year sentence for fraud and corruption, was found guilty of seeking a 500,000-rand-a-year bribe from French defence company Thales on behalf of Zuma and not for the payments made spanning over a ten-year period. If Zuma is guilty of receiving payments from Shaik, a risk exists that all business persons who have made any payments to their friends in government will end up facing the same fate.
It has now been accepted that to correct the historical economic injustice created by apartheid, blacks should be given preferential access to government business and yet in doing so the spectre of being accused of corruption rests on all emerging businessmen who because of history invariably look to the state as the primary source of business and capital accumulation.
Many of the emerging South African businessmen were colleagues during the anti-apartheid struggle with the political elites and the friendships forged are now being called to question and if the Zuma standard is applied, I am not sure how many of the politicians in South Africa would pass the test.
Any payment made to a post-apartheid political friend by a business person attracts with it the risk of being perceived as a generally corrupt transaction. It is incumbent upon the beneficiary of such payments to disclose to the state the true nature of the payment and the underlying relationship. However, it is not the case that in South Africa all politicians can claim that over the last 14 years they have not received cash and non-cash payments from their friends in government.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Zimbabwe – Nathaniel Manheru/Charamba and lessons for nation building
Zimbabwe will turn 28 this year not because the country did not have a history prior to independence but citizens chose to build a new civilization in 1979 based on a just and democratic constitutional order underpinned by a simple concept of self government.
The post colonial state was a product of a protracted civil rights struggle and I would like to think that many would agree that the Zimbabwe of today is not exactly what the struggle was meant to help establish.
On paper, Zimbabwe is a democratic state but if there is a more potent threat to Zimbabwe’s constitutional order, Mr. Charamba, President Mugabe’s chief spin doctor, would top the list.
He writes a weekly column that is published by the state controlled daily newspaper, the Herald, in which he expresses views that exposes the extent of the collapse of the semblance of a constitutional order that is normally expected in a democratic society.
Having followed some of Charamba’s articles, I have come to the inescapable conclusion that in as much as many people may believe that President Mugabe is the sole poison pill to national progress, the real problem lies in our generation of which Charamba can count as my contemporary but whose views pose a much more significant problem for Zimbabwe to extricate itself from the avoidable humanly created economic and political quagmire.
President Mugabe is on record saying that the destiny of Zimbabwe can only be shaped by its citizens who ultimately should own the nation building project. At the core of the foundational principles of the post colonial state was the notion that citizens would create their own government and express their wishes through the constitutionally defined channels.
It was never part of the deal that the constitution would be cynically interpreted to allow a single individual to monopolize state power even in the face of monumental failure and then rely on state power to intimidate citizens into believing that there is no alternative than to surrender their sovereignty to an exclusive club with the monopoly of abusing the media to advance views that threaten the very constitutional order that the President purports to uphold.
Although ZANU-PF has dominated the post colonial era, it cannot be said that the framers of the constitution of Zimbabwe intended to create a situation where the ruling party and the state would be one thing. Indeed, reading the diatribe of Charamba confirms that either he is unaware that the state belongs to citizens and ZANU-PF should be nothing but a club of believers and members or he thinks that citizens should be mere pawns that are occasionally used to legitimize through the electoral process a predetermined outcome.
It seems odd that a civil servant working for the people would openly insult his masters without whose sweat and taxes the state would not exist and ultimately he would be in the ranks of the condemned majority poor.
Although he uses the name Manheru, his cover has already been exposed. He is, evidently, not afraid to air his partisan and often offensive views as would any rational civil servant working as a permanent secretary for a state institution.
The head of the civil service under a properly functioning democratic order would ordinarily be apolitical and the name Permanent Secretary was deliberately chosen to highlight the permanency of the job. In other words, the change of a government would ideally not have any impact on the civil service.
It cannot be said that Charamba behaves like a civil servant rather he behaves like an intellectual terrorist armed with the venom that can only be expected from a political commissar. It is evident that Charamba has reached a point of no return and he has chosen to identify himself as a revolutionary civil servant prosecuting a national democratic revolution that so far has failed to confer real benefits to citizens.
To the extent that Charamba appears to believe that democracy, rule of law and human and property rights are a nuisance, it is reasonable to ask why President Mugabe, his principal, would subscribe to elections if the outcome of such democratic experiments could produce undesirable outcomes.
Although the constitution of Zimbabwe is clear and deliberate in terms of the bill of rights, the last 28 years have created an atmosphere of fear where citizens who may aspire to be considered for political office are easily dismissed, vilified and scandalised by so-called civil servants.
Would Charamba be prepared to serve any other person than President Mugabe? Is it in the national interest for a highly opinionated civil servant to be on the payroll of the state rather than the party?
Zimbabweans have allowed their civil service to be polluted by political prostitutes who have no respect for the constitutional order that their masters purport to respect.
Some have argued that due to externally influenced factors, Zimbabwe should suspend the democratic order so that the state is not accountable to its masters, the citizens, until the so-called bilateral dispute with the former colonial master is resolved.
We can see in the actions of Gono and Charamba that they have accepted that any other democratic choice expressed by the people of Zimbabwe would not be acceptable if it did not yield a predetermined outcome.
ZANU-PF is supposed to be a juristic person in its own right with a separate and distinct existence from the state. However, Charamba whose position in the party is not known appears to have stepped into the shoes of Professor Moyo to act in a Nazi-style manner with no regard to the constitutional consequences effectively making the state an agent of the ruling party.
Ideally, any government should belong to all the citizens and transparency would be the only basis on which a state can function in a democratic order.
In the minds of Charamba and similar sycophants it seems that they have accepted that citizens should not have a right to question government actions and even peoples’ representatives in parliament like Butau are exposed to the worst form of intimidation.
I read Charamba’s article entitled “Zim: Lessons from a splitting rainbow” that was published by the Herald on Saturday, 5 January 2008. Charamba is characteristic style was not interested in state matters but with the threat to ZANU-PF of an alleged project to broaden the menu of political options available to Zimbabweans in the forthcoming elections.
It is not surprising that Charamba would hold Simba Makoni, a member of the politburo of ZANU-PF, in contempt only because of allegations that he may be considering becoming a candidate in the 2008 elections.
Ordinarily any civil servant working for the state in a democratic order would be indifferent to political contestants but this is no longer the case in Charamba’s Zimbabwe.
Charamba has no shame in using Makoni’s taxes against his democratic right to make himself available if nominated to stand as a candidate.
Who would have thought that the country that the likes of Chitepo, Tongogara, Joshua Nkomo, Ndabaningi Sithole and others would end up a hostage of people like Charamba and his ilk.
His dismisses Makoni using the state newspapers without allowing citizens to make their own informed choices. If Makoni is disqualified because of incompetence I am not sure what rational Zimbabweans would say freely about the performance of the state over the last 28 years under Charamba’s boss?
Charamba then goes on diminish the role played by Ibbo Mandaza whose record in the post colonial state is well established. I am informed that Mandaza worked for the state for 10 years and it is irresponsible for anyone working for the same administration to seek to undermine the record of a former colleague just because he has chosen to exercise his constitutional right to seek to advance the cause of change.
I should point out that I hold no brief to represent both Makoni and Mandaza but find it unacceptable that Charamba would arrogate to him the role of a custodian of the national democratic revolution project in a partisan manner.
If it is true that Makoni is associated with a project that would increase the available choices for Zimbabweans notwithstanding his alleged questionable credentials, anyone who loves Zimbabwe and is cognisant of the current policy bankruptcy and rudderless navigation would support such courage.
Is it not strange that it now takes courage to even accept to be a candidate for political office in post colonial Zimbabwe, a country that rose from the womb of colonial oppression?
I am not sure what the heroes and heroines buried at the heroes’ acre would think of Charamba’s views against Tsvangirai, Chibhebe and others who have taken it upon themselves that Zimbabwe needs a change of direction.
The real reason for me to write the article is partly to address the comments made by Charamba in response to my article that exposed the hypocrisy of the RBZ in the ongoing Butau saga. This is what Charamba had to say:”Mawere, poor Mawere!To have an opponent like Mutumwa Mawere is a blessing. You never struggle for feedback. I am sure Charamba relishes his tango with him. I mean if such a pithy line on Butau is acknowledged so profusely, so sanctimoniously, so expansively, who needs to cast lots to tell where and how the blow has fallen and has been received respectively? What piqued and hurt this born-again South African? A mere reference to fugitives who run and run until they unfailingly hit the shores of Albion? Fugitives who know no other land to run to? And he dares talk about Gono and patronage. He, of all people? What business did he start here without Zanu-PF and Government guarantees and patronage? Let him not push his luck too far, this clever-for-nothing bitter charlatan. Tizvinyore. Ngaati pwee. Icho!He obviously sees me as an opponent which is expected from any civil servant that does not understand the role of the state. It is wrong for Charamba to see my criticism of the manner in which he is politicising the civil service as personal. I am sure that if the Public Service Commission still exists in Zimbabwe, the comments made by Charamba about Butau and other so-called fugitives would be of concern warranting disciplinary action.
As long as Charamba is an organ of the state it cannot be acceptable that he thinks he is above the law. He makes the statement above that his comments about the role of the West in allegedly undermining the interests of Zimbabwe was not targeted at me and, therefore, I should stay out of the fray as if to suggest that people are only entitled to comment on matters that affect them personally.
Charamba recklessly uses the term “fugitive” to describe not only Butau but Makamba, Mushore, Makoni, and others and attempts to make a distinction between the so-called fugitives that are domiciled in the shores of Albion and those domiciled in Africa suggesting that the term has territorial application.
The use of the term fugitive to describe the circumstances of Butau and others is not only mischievous but irresponsible. According to what has been published so far in relation to Butau, it is evident that he cannot be classified as a fugitive for to be a fugitive one would have to fall in anyone of the following categories:
1. If one has run away from Zimbabwe when charges were being formulated against him;
2. If one has breached any bail given to him;
3. If one has escaped from prison
4. If one has left Zimbabwe to avoid any legal process;
Charamba is fully aware that all that Butau has done is simply to exercise a constitutional right to require the government of Zimbabwe to act in terms of the law if he is to face charges in Zimbabwe. We all know what happened to Kuruneri, Makamba and others who after being unlawfully placed on remand were eventually acquitted by the courts.
Would Butau have been treated any differently from Kuruneri, a former cabinet minister, who only last week was set free by a Supreme Court judge? Kuruneri’s circumstances are not different from the allegations against Butau. What is striking is that Kuruneri, Butau and Makamba are all from Mashonaland Central Province where Vice President Mujuru comes from giving credence that the selective targeting of people by Gono may be driven by an ulterior motive.
To the extent that the Zimbabwean police are looking for Butau for the purpose of investigating certain allegations, he cannot be considered to be a fugitive. He ran away from nothing and in any democratic society it would be unacceptable for citizens to be presumed guilty before the intervention of the judiciary. The outburst of Charamba goes a long way towards confirming that Zimbabwe is no longer a democratic state in which the separation of powers doctrine is applicable.
If a duly elected Member of Parliament and a Chairman of the powerful Budge and Finance Committee is susceptible to intimidation then citizens have reason to be concerned. Butau has not left Zimbabwe to avoid any legal process but like Joshua Nkomo before him came to the conclusion that things have fallen apart and no interests of justice would be served by exposing himself to what the likes of Kuruneri endured.
It is interesting that Charamba is of the view that Butau ought to have been included in the sanctions list and is angry that the British chose to omit his name. Why would the government of Zimbabwe be concerned about a sanctions list when the official position is that they are illegal? If Butau is not on the sanctions list, then how can President Mugabe blame the same ineffective sanctions on the economic collapse?
I am sure that Charamba is aware of the call by a state Prosecutor, Mr. Tawanda Zvekare, in the Manjoro case in which Butau is alleged to have facilitated the procurement of foreign currency for an investigation to establish the circumstances surrounding the release of more than Z$7 trillion by the RBZ to Flatwater Investments, a shelf company. He urged the court to give an order for thorough investigations into the matter saying the central bank should have verified the suitability of Flatwater Investments to be contracted to procure tractors for the mechanisation programme before releasing the money. Charamba should be concerned like any loyal and honest civil servant about what Manjoro said in court regarding the mandate he got from the RBZ to import tractors from a pre-selected foreign supplier, Michigan Tractors, a company allegedly connected to Gono. If Mr Zvekare can openly blame the RBZ, as reported by the Herald, for disbursing Z$7 trillion without undertaking any due diligence on the beneficiary, then why is it that Charamba sees no problem in focusing his attention on the RBZ?
With respect to the RBZ’s role in the Butau saga, this is what Zvekare had to say in court:
"The firm contracted Manjoro to source foreign currency on the black market on their behalf, who also subcontracted several runners like (fugitive MP David) Butau to assist him. The rest of the money given to Manjoro is not accounted for and the rest of the money he gave to his friends is also not accounted for. What we have now is a grand theft involving the RBZ itself.I find it incredulous that a whole central bank of a country would release trillions to a company on the strength of a mere letter, which was not verified. This marks of a conspiracy between the central bank and the company to steal all this money.
Right from the RBZ to the lowest runner at Road Port no mercy should be accorded them. The court should give an order for thorough investigations right up to the central bank to avoid a situation whereby the courts would be only dealing with runners instead of cash barons and baronesses."
Even President Mugabe would agree that if what Zvekare said is true about the RBZ then it would not be in the national interest for him not to take responsibility for the decay.
Charamba then challenges my views on Gono and the mafia-style operations of the RBZ. He alleges that my business was started with ZANU-PF and government guarantees and patronage and then fails to expose how such patronage manifested itself. Surely, for a spin doctor like Charamba it should not be difficult for him to expose me. Why try to protect the public from knowing the truth about my businesses? If my businesses were corruptly acquired, then surely Charamba should not hesitate naming my accomplices? Why would Charamba seek to expose Butau and then refuse to expose my alleged benefactors?
He threatens me not to push my luck too far suggesting that if I heed the message then he will have no incentive to tell the public the truth about me. I am challenging Charamba openly to expose any information that may be available to him substantiating his baseless allegation that I acquired Shabanie Mashaba Mines (Private) Limited in 1996 using a government guarantee. It is important that Charamba grows up and walk the talk. The public deserves to know the truth.
The post colonial state was a product of a protracted civil rights struggle and I would like to think that many would agree that the Zimbabwe of today is not exactly what the struggle was meant to help establish.
On paper, Zimbabwe is a democratic state but if there is a more potent threat to Zimbabwe’s constitutional order, Mr. Charamba, President Mugabe’s chief spin doctor, would top the list.
He writes a weekly column that is published by the state controlled daily newspaper, the Herald, in which he expresses views that exposes the extent of the collapse of the semblance of a constitutional order that is normally expected in a democratic society.
Having followed some of Charamba’s articles, I have come to the inescapable conclusion that in as much as many people may believe that President Mugabe is the sole poison pill to national progress, the real problem lies in our generation of which Charamba can count as my contemporary but whose views pose a much more significant problem for Zimbabwe to extricate itself from the avoidable humanly created economic and political quagmire.
President Mugabe is on record saying that the destiny of Zimbabwe can only be shaped by its citizens who ultimately should own the nation building project. At the core of the foundational principles of the post colonial state was the notion that citizens would create their own government and express their wishes through the constitutionally defined channels.
It was never part of the deal that the constitution would be cynically interpreted to allow a single individual to monopolize state power even in the face of monumental failure and then rely on state power to intimidate citizens into believing that there is no alternative than to surrender their sovereignty to an exclusive club with the monopoly of abusing the media to advance views that threaten the very constitutional order that the President purports to uphold.
Although ZANU-PF has dominated the post colonial era, it cannot be said that the framers of the constitution of Zimbabwe intended to create a situation where the ruling party and the state would be one thing. Indeed, reading the diatribe of Charamba confirms that either he is unaware that the state belongs to citizens and ZANU-PF should be nothing but a club of believers and members or he thinks that citizens should be mere pawns that are occasionally used to legitimize through the electoral process a predetermined outcome.
It seems odd that a civil servant working for the people would openly insult his masters without whose sweat and taxes the state would not exist and ultimately he would be in the ranks of the condemned majority poor.
Although he uses the name Manheru, his cover has already been exposed. He is, evidently, not afraid to air his partisan and often offensive views as would any rational civil servant working as a permanent secretary for a state institution.
The head of the civil service under a properly functioning democratic order would ordinarily be apolitical and the name Permanent Secretary was deliberately chosen to highlight the permanency of the job. In other words, the change of a government would ideally not have any impact on the civil service.
It cannot be said that Charamba behaves like a civil servant rather he behaves like an intellectual terrorist armed with the venom that can only be expected from a political commissar. It is evident that Charamba has reached a point of no return and he has chosen to identify himself as a revolutionary civil servant prosecuting a national democratic revolution that so far has failed to confer real benefits to citizens.
To the extent that Charamba appears to believe that democracy, rule of law and human and property rights are a nuisance, it is reasonable to ask why President Mugabe, his principal, would subscribe to elections if the outcome of such democratic experiments could produce undesirable outcomes.
Although the constitution of Zimbabwe is clear and deliberate in terms of the bill of rights, the last 28 years have created an atmosphere of fear where citizens who may aspire to be considered for political office are easily dismissed, vilified and scandalised by so-called civil servants.
Would Charamba be prepared to serve any other person than President Mugabe? Is it in the national interest for a highly opinionated civil servant to be on the payroll of the state rather than the party?
Zimbabweans have allowed their civil service to be polluted by political prostitutes who have no respect for the constitutional order that their masters purport to respect.
Some have argued that due to externally influenced factors, Zimbabwe should suspend the democratic order so that the state is not accountable to its masters, the citizens, until the so-called bilateral dispute with the former colonial master is resolved.
We can see in the actions of Gono and Charamba that they have accepted that any other democratic choice expressed by the people of Zimbabwe would not be acceptable if it did not yield a predetermined outcome.
ZANU-PF is supposed to be a juristic person in its own right with a separate and distinct existence from the state. However, Charamba whose position in the party is not known appears to have stepped into the shoes of Professor Moyo to act in a Nazi-style manner with no regard to the constitutional consequences effectively making the state an agent of the ruling party.
Ideally, any government should belong to all the citizens and transparency would be the only basis on which a state can function in a democratic order.
In the minds of Charamba and similar sycophants it seems that they have accepted that citizens should not have a right to question government actions and even peoples’ representatives in parliament like Butau are exposed to the worst form of intimidation.
I read Charamba’s article entitled “Zim: Lessons from a splitting rainbow” that was published by the Herald on Saturday, 5 January 2008. Charamba is characteristic style was not interested in state matters but with the threat to ZANU-PF of an alleged project to broaden the menu of political options available to Zimbabweans in the forthcoming elections.
It is not surprising that Charamba would hold Simba Makoni, a member of the politburo of ZANU-PF, in contempt only because of allegations that he may be considering becoming a candidate in the 2008 elections.
Ordinarily any civil servant working for the state in a democratic order would be indifferent to political contestants but this is no longer the case in Charamba’s Zimbabwe.
Charamba has no shame in using Makoni’s taxes against his democratic right to make himself available if nominated to stand as a candidate.
Who would have thought that the country that the likes of Chitepo, Tongogara, Joshua Nkomo, Ndabaningi Sithole and others would end up a hostage of people like Charamba and his ilk.
His dismisses Makoni using the state newspapers without allowing citizens to make their own informed choices. If Makoni is disqualified because of incompetence I am not sure what rational Zimbabweans would say freely about the performance of the state over the last 28 years under Charamba’s boss?
Charamba then goes on diminish the role played by Ibbo Mandaza whose record in the post colonial state is well established. I am informed that Mandaza worked for the state for 10 years and it is irresponsible for anyone working for the same administration to seek to undermine the record of a former colleague just because he has chosen to exercise his constitutional right to seek to advance the cause of change.
I should point out that I hold no brief to represent both Makoni and Mandaza but find it unacceptable that Charamba would arrogate to him the role of a custodian of the national democratic revolution project in a partisan manner.
If it is true that Makoni is associated with a project that would increase the available choices for Zimbabweans notwithstanding his alleged questionable credentials, anyone who loves Zimbabwe and is cognisant of the current policy bankruptcy and rudderless navigation would support such courage.
Is it not strange that it now takes courage to even accept to be a candidate for political office in post colonial Zimbabwe, a country that rose from the womb of colonial oppression?
I am not sure what the heroes and heroines buried at the heroes’ acre would think of Charamba’s views against Tsvangirai, Chibhebe and others who have taken it upon themselves that Zimbabwe needs a change of direction.
The real reason for me to write the article is partly to address the comments made by Charamba in response to my article that exposed the hypocrisy of the RBZ in the ongoing Butau saga. This is what Charamba had to say:”Mawere, poor Mawere!To have an opponent like Mutumwa Mawere is a blessing. You never struggle for feedback. I am sure Charamba relishes his tango with him. I mean if such a pithy line on Butau is acknowledged so profusely, so sanctimoniously, so expansively, who needs to cast lots to tell where and how the blow has fallen and has been received respectively? What piqued and hurt this born-again South African? A mere reference to fugitives who run and run until they unfailingly hit the shores of Albion? Fugitives who know no other land to run to? And he dares talk about Gono and patronage. He, of all people? What business did he start here without Zanu-PF and Government guarantees and patronage? Let him not push his luck too far, this clever-for-nothing bitter charlatan. Tizvinyore. Ngaati pwee. Icho!He obviously sees me as an opponent which is expected from any civil servant that does not understand the role of the state. It is wrong for Charamba to see my criticism of the manner in which he is politicising the civil service as personal. I am sure that if the Public Service Commission still exists in Zimbabwe, the comments made by Charamba about Butau and other so-called fugitives would be of concern warranting disciplinary action.
As long as Charamba is an organ of the state it cannot be acceptable that he thinks he is above the law. He makes the statement above that his comments about the role of the West in allegedly undermining the interests of Zimbabwe was not targeted at me and, therefore, I should stay out of the fray as if to suggest that people are only entitled to comment on matters that affect them personally.
Charamba recklessly uses the term “fugitive” to describe not only Butau but Makamba, Mushore, Makoni, and others and attempts to make a distinction between the so-called fugitives that are domiciled in the shores of Albion and those domiciled in Africa suggesting that the term has territorial application.
The use of the term fugitive to describe the circumstances of Butau and others is not only mischievous but irresponsible. According to what has been published so far in relation to Butau, it is evident that he cannot be classified as a fugitive for to be a fugitive one would have to fall in anyone of the following categories:
1. If one has run away from Zimbabwe when charges were being formulated against him;
2. If one has breached any bail given to him;
3. If one has escaped from prison
4. If one has left Zimbabwe to avoid any legal process;
Charamba is fully aware that all that Butau has done is simply to exercise a constitutional right to require the government of Zimbabwe to act in terms of the law if he is to face charges in Zimbabwe. We all know what happened to Kuruneri, Makamba and others who after being unlawfully placed on remand were eventually acquitted by the courts.
Would Butau have been treated any differently from Kuruneri, a former cabinet minister, who only last week was set free by a Supreme Court judge? Kuruneri’s circumstances are not different from the allegations against Butau. What is striking is that Kuruneri, Butau and Makamba are all from Mashonaland Central Province where Vice President Mujuru comes from giving credence that the selective targeting of people by Gono may be driven by an ulterior motive.
To the extent that the Zimbabwean police are looking for Butau for the purpose of investigating certain allegations, he cannot be considered to be a fugitive. He ran away from nothing and in any democratic society it would be unacceptable for citizens to be presumed guilty before the intervention of the judiciary. The outburst of Charamba goes a long way towards confirming that Zimbabwe is no longer a democratic state in which the separation of powers doctrine is applicable.
If a duly elected Member of Parliament and a Chairman of the powerful Budge and Finance Committee is susceptible to intimidation then citizens have reason to be concerned. Butau has not left Zimbabwe to avoid any legal process but like Joshua Nkomo before him came to the conclusion that things have fallen apart and no interests of justice would be served by exposing himself to what the likes of Kuruneri endured.
It is interesting that Charamba is of the view that Butau ought to have been included in the sanctions list and is angry that the British chose to omit his name. Why would the government of Zimbabwe be concerned about a sanctions list when the official position is that they are illegal? If Butau is not on the sanctions list, then how can President Mugabe blame the same ineffective sanctions on the economic collapse?
I am sure that Charamba is aware of the call by a state Prosecutor, Mr. Tawanda Zvekare, in the Manjoro case in which Butau is alleged to have facilitated the procurement of foreign currency for an investigation to establish the circumstances surrounding the release of more than Z$7 trillion by the RBZ to Flatwater Investments, a shelf company. He urged the court to give an order for thorough investigations into the matter saying the central bank should have verified the suitability of Flatwater Investments to be contracted to procure tractors for the mechanisation programme before releasing the money. Charamba should be concerned like any loyal and honest civil servant about what Manjoro said in court regarding the mandate he got from the RBZ to import tractors from a pre-selected foreign supplier, Michigan Tractors, a company allegedly connected to Gono. If Mr Zvekare can openly blame the RBZ, as reported by the Herald, for disbursing Z$7 trillion without undertaking any due diligence on the beneficiary, then why is it that Charamba sees no problem in focusing his attention on the RBZ?
With respect to the RBZ’s role in the Butau saga, this is what Zvekare had to say in court:
"The firm contracted Manjoro to source foreign currency on the black market on their behalf, who also subcontracted several runners like (fugitive MP David) Butau to assist him. The rest of the money given to Manjoro is not accounted for and the rest of the money he gave to his friends is also not accounted for. What we have now is a grand theft involving the RBZ itself.I find it incredulous that a whole central bank of a country would release trillions to a company on the strength of a mere letter, which was not verified. This marks of a conspiracy between the central bank and the company to steal all this money.
Right from the RBZ to the lowest runner at Road Port no mercy should be accorded them. The court should give an order for thorough investigations right up to the central bank to avoid a situation whereby the courts would be only dealing with runners instead of cash barons and baronesses."
Even President Mugabe would agree that if what Zvekare said is true about the RBZ then it would not be in the national interest for him not to take responsibility for the decay.
Charamba then challenges my views on Gono and the mafia-style operations of the RBZ. He alleges that my business was started with ZANU-PF and government guarantees and patronage and then fails to expose how such patronage manifested itself. Surely, for a spin doctor like Charamba it should not be difficult for him to expose me. Why try to protect the public from knowing the truth about my businesses? If my businesses were corruptly acquired, then surely Charamba should not hesitate naming my accomplices? Why would Charamba seek to expose Butau and then refuse to expose my alleged benefactors?
He threatens me not to push my luck too far suggesting that if I heed the message then he will have no incentive to tell the public the truth about me. I am challenging Charamba openly to expose any information that may be available to him substantiating his baseless allegation that I acquired Shabanie Mashaba Mines (Private) Limited in 1996 using a government guarantee. It is important that Charamba grows up and walk the talk. The public deserves to know the truth.
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