IN last week’s article, I paid tribute to one of Zimbabwe’s gallant fighters, Liberation War Hero Cde Alexander ‘Gora’ Kanengoni, a hero of two struggles: the ‘hot war’ (Second Chimurenga 1964 – 1979) and the current raging ‘cold war’ between Zimbabwe and the Anglo-Saxon-controlled US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and their European allies.
The editor of The Patriot last week picked up the theme with a headline ‘Cold war grips Zimbabwe’.
I thought it is important to elaborate and help readers appreciate the nature of Zimbabwe’s ‘cold war’ with Western countries.
We shall explain the meaning of ‘cold war’ and relate it to Zimbabwe’s current struggle against its ideological and economic adversaries.
We shall examine the nature of the on-going ‘cold war’ providing examples to show that it indeed is long-drawn out and that it in fact is also Africa’s struggle against exploitation and marginalisation by a predatory capitalist West.
We shall later also look at strategies that Zimbabwe has used or might use in future to fight and win the West’s diabolical cold war against us, essentially a war for the hearts and minds of the masses of Zimbabwe.
When I googled the term ‘cold war’, I picked up that historically, it was a period of ‘struggle for global supremacy between the US and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the Soviet Union) which lasted from 1945 to 1980 or up to the time the Soviet Union of 15 republics collapsed’.
The two so-called super-powers had competing ideologies and visions after the end of the Second World War (1939-1945).
America and the Soviet Union had different ideas about economics and government.
The Soviet communists, as did those of China, believed that government must control production and resources of the nation.
That is the model China has continued to use with great success until today.
The Americans prefer capitalism where business and large corporations control the economy and have global empires where they loot and bring home the proceeds.
As a result of these ideological differences, they fought a ‘war of ideas’ called the ‘cold war’ because there was no direct physical conflict between them.
It was a period of political and military rivalry between the West (America and its European allies (NATO) and Russia with its allies (Warsaw Pact) (Source: www.eduplace.com).
Today it seems to be continuing, perhaps on a different scale.
The ‘Cold War’ spawned several proxy wars where each of the rival superpowers backed opposing sides such as in the Korean War that divided the Korean Peninsula into North and South, the Vietnam War which pitted North against American-backed South Vietnam, the Afghan War where the Soviets backed the government while America backed the rebels.
Several other examples are available.
Our Second Chimurenga was also part of the Cold War equation as it witnessed America supporting racist Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith against our gallant ZANLA and ZIPRA liberation fighters backed by the two communist giants China and the then Soviet Union.
And so we trace our cold war history from our Second Chimurenga.
During that hot war, the United Nations (UN) slapped Smith with economic sanctions, but Britain, America and their allies paid lip service to those economic measures as they secretly continued to trade indirectly and supply arms to the Smith regime.
The Americans were quite blunt.
They said for strategic reasons they would continue to source chrome from Rhodesia and passed legislation to that effect.
The British Prime Minister Harold Wilson refused to place a military blockade at the Mozambican ports as part of the sanctions, preferring instead endless non-conclusive talks.
As part of the cold war narrative, President Robert Mugabe and late Vice-President Joshua Nkomo were accused by the West of supping with the communists, China and the Soviet Union, who supplied guerilla forces with weapons.
Those accusations continued after independence as attention shifted to protecting the interests of a few thousand whites who continued to possess the lion’s share of Zimbabwe’s agricultural land.
Whoever dared to take those farms from the whites was accused of human rights violations.
Here one can read ‘human’ to mean ‘white person’.
Those accusations continue today as part of the cold war against Zimbabwe.
When the West decided to intensify their cold war against Zimbabwe through economic sanctions following our repossession of land, Russia, the main partner in the former Soviet Union, and Communist China came to our rescue by blocking anti-Zimbabwe UN Security Council resolutions using their veto powers.
President Mugabe deliberately adopted a ‘Look-East Policy’.
This policy is recognition of both the friendly cover in the context of the cold war and the rising economic power of both China and Russia.
China is soon set to surpass the US as an economic giant!
Zimbabwe is set to benefit from economic ties through trade.
And so the cold war continues.
Zimbabwe is accused of human rights violations when all we are doing is to correct a historical injustice where the British stole our land at gun-point and we took it back at gunpoint, truly fulfilling the saying that those who live by the sword (gun) (the British colonialists) shall die by the sword (gun).
Sometimes the sword can be invisible as was the case when we repossessed our farmland.
The drum at the farm gate and a few tricks with snuff supplied by our spirit mediums (mhondoro/masvikiro) were enough to send the land thieves packing.
Our ancestral spirits are great! But I digress.
The communists supplied us with guns.
They are our all-weather friends.
They did not come to demand payment for arms supplied during the liberation struggle at independence in 1980, as Shylock would have for his pound of flesh.
They waited until we invited them, when the cold war was getting hot again!
Yes the cold war intensified when Zimbabwe Democracy Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA) of 2001 was passed by the US government against the innocent masses of Zimbabwe whose crime was reclaiming that which had been stolen from them by force of arms.
That is our cold war: Tension, political and economic, between the West and Zimbabwe.
It is a cold war because there are no military engagements yet the economy has been battered to ‘scream point’.
It is a cold war because the two sides still maintain diplomatic relations.
President Mugabe still travels to the UN because of provisions in the UN Charter.
The Americans and the British still fund their long-term projects to keep Zimbabwe’s population as low as possible through constant supply of condoms, birth pills and materials to circumcise (or is it to partially sterilise) the male population who are well known for liking to be smart!
Banks are under strict orders not to process any transactions involving Zimbabwean business entities.
Banks that finance agriculture are particularly targeted to cripple the country through hunger and famine.
The ambassadors of Britain and its allies still smile and drink tea with Zimbabwean Government officials as the sanctions take their toll.
This is how a cold war is fought; no guns, no swords, not even bows and arrows, but the damage to the general population is horrendous.