[Marxism] Gowans fires back on Zimbabwe

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

Zimbabwe and the Politics of Demons and Angels
By Stephen Gowans

Soon after I wrote an article titled “Mugabe gets the Milosevic  
Treatment,” posted at Counterpunch.org, I received an e-mail from a  
representative of SW Radio Africa, who said I should visit Zimbabwe  
before writing articles about the country. This was followed by a  
Patrick Bond reply to my article in Counterpunch, invoking the same  
argument, though in an indirect way. Gowans’ views are nonsense, Bond  
fumed, at least, as he saw them, sitting across the Limpopo river,  
where, he said, he had managed to establish a pretty good handle on  
what was going in Zimbabwe.

Had I been writing a travelogue both of my critics would have made a  
good point, but inasmuch as I was writing about Washington and London  
having dragooned civil society – and in some cases, having created it  
from the ground up – for the purpose of ousting the government of  
Robert Mugabe, their criticism was wide of the mark. You don’t have  
to travel to Zimbabwe to figure out that Mugabe is getting the  
Milosevic treatment.

Even Bond, in his characteristically haughty way, acknowledged the US  
intrigues in Zimbabwe with a dismissive “tell us something we don’t  
already know.”

For the record, the British newspaper The Guardian revealed as early  
as August 22, 2002 that, “The United States government has said it  
wants to see President Robert Mugabe removed from power and that it  
is working with the Zimbabwean opposition” “trade unions, pro- 
democracy groups and human rights organizations” “to bring about a  
change of administration.”

Washington confirmed its own civil society-assisted regime change  
plans for Zimbabwe in an April 5, 2007 report, revealing that in 2006  
“The U.S. government continued to support the efforts of the  
political opposition, the media and civil society,” including  
providing training and assistance to the kind of grassroots “pro- 
democracy” groups the US had used to bring down the government of  
Slobodan Milosevic, and that Bond had celebrated in his Counterpunch  
article as “the independent left.”

There are three key reasons why the US is trying to oust the Zanu-PF  
government:

(1) The Zanu-PF government has expropriated land from white  
commercial farmers for redistribution to the rural poor.

(2) It has pursued economically nationalist policies at odds with IMF  
demands.

(3) It has been a rallying point for anti-imperialist sentiment in  
southern Africa.

SW Radio Africa is a UK-based radio station, funded by the USAID  
Office of Transition Initiatives to broadcast anti-government  
propaganda into Zimbabwe. Violet Gonda, one of the station’s  
interviewers, has been sending me transcripts of her interviews ever  
since my Milosevic Treatment article appeared on the Counterpunch  
site. In an April 10 interview with Zimbabwe’s Home Affairs Minister  
Kembo Mohadi, UK-based Gonda was challenged by Mohadi to “come to  
Zimbabwe and witness this for yourself and don’t be talking about  
things that you don’t know,” turning the argument Gonda’s colleague  
had made to me against her. Mohadi was referring to Gonda’s  
allegations that MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai had been beaten and  
that MDC supporters had been tortured.

Amusing as it was to see the same argument used against SW Radio  
Africa, the “come to Zimbabwe before you say anything” demand is  
based on the startlingly naïve view that someone else’s perspective  
must align with your own if only he visits the same piece of real  
estate. The view of the rural poor in Zimbabwe, or of veterans of the  
guerilla war for national liberation, can hardly be expected to be  
the same as those of white commercial farmers, even though they live  
in the same country. It is experience, race, which side of  
colonialism you’ve been on, and what opportunities imperialist  
countries offer you, that account for why the views of Zimbabwe’s  
rural poor and of Zanu-PF supporters are different from those of  
comfortable white professors ensconced in foundation-supported  
positions across the Limpopo river, and of young black Africans from  
Harare who travel to the US on US State Department sponsored trips to  
study civil disobedience techniques.

If my article  resonated with anyone, it  resonated with black  
Africans, members of the African Diaspora and anti-imperialists.  
White commercial farmers and anyone linked to the civil society  
apparatus deployed to unseat Mugabe’s government angrily dismissed  
it. But why? Why would opponents of Mugabe – including Bond, who  
acknowledges that the US is acting to drive Zanu-PF from power (that  
is, when he’s not arguing the exact opposite) — take exception to  
someone drawing attention to something that is a matter of public  
record?

The reason, I think, has everything to do what different groups of  
people value more: the thwarting of imperialist designs (and the land  
reform, redress of colonial injustices, and national sovereignty that  
are thereby given space to come to fruition), or ousting Mugabe. If  
you want Mugabe to go, you’ll oppose anything that reveals efforts to  
unseat him as being illegitimate. It won’t be enough to say, “Yes,  
you’re right, Washington and London are engaged in intrigues to  
topple the Mugabe government, but all the same I dislike him and his  
program and here’s why.” Instead, you’ll fulminate, “This is nonsense!”

You’ll probably also practice the politics of demons and angels – the  
division of the world into two camps: bad guys and good guys, black  
hats and white hats. The objective is to describe leaders,  
governments, movements and programs you want to see the end of as  
demons, and those who are acting to achieve this end as angels.  
However, because those that lean to the left of the political  
spectrum are unlikely to regard imperialist governments as angels  
(although this is far from being invariably true) civil society  
groups are recruited as proxies. They appear to be independent, to do  
good works, and they have a “socialism from below” feel that  
resonates with the Western left. Patrick Bond, who directs a center  
for civil society, is a master of invoking the kind of rhetoric about  
social movements being an “independent left” operating in spaces  
between neo-liberal Third World governments and neo-liberal First  
World governments that appeals to the Z-Net congregation.

The politics of demons and angels is terribly unsophisticated. That  
should be enough to keep 100 paces away from it. But it should also  
be eschewed for an even more compelling reason: because it’s used to  
build support for imperialist interventions in other countries —  
interventions that have nothing whatever to do with promoting human  
rights, building democracy, and keeping the peace, and everything to  
do with opening up space for the intervening countries’ corporations,  
banks and investors to make a profit.

full: http://gowans.wordpress.com/2007/04/15/zimbabwe-and-the- 
politics-of-demons-and-angels/
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