THE report published last week by the International Crisis Group (ICG) which claimed to present the ‘real’ picture on the state of affairs in the country did not score any point.
The group’s anti-Zimbabwe tirades go against the wave of endorsements that the country has been receiving in recent times from across the world.
Revealingly titled ‘Zimbabwe: Waiting for the Future’, the report absurdly sought to diminish the impact of progress that the country has made in the past few months by claiming that an ‘inclusive’ national dialogue between the ruling party ZANU PF and the embattled MDC-T is the ‘only’ way out for the country.
But there has been a particular level of contrasting views between Western academics and governments on the one hand and the ICG and its allies on the other over the route Zimbabwe is taking.
The Crisis in Zimbabwe Coaltion, led by Dhewa Mavhinga who succeeded Okay Machisa, is also solidly behind its parent organisation.
Western governments who are facing intense pressure to engage Harare have in the past few weeks been sending signals through their academics and think-tanks towards that route.
They have been uncharacteristically blunt in their assessment of Zimbabwe which they now agree is the place to be.
Like progressive Zimbabweans, they do not believe that dialogue with faltering opposition groups can lift the country.
Rather and correctly so, they have been rallying their countries to re-engage Harare ‘as a matter of urgency’.
But the ICG and its opposition allies have been curiously clinging on yesterday’s news of propping the anti-Zimbabwe crusade in an era of short-termism.
The tug-of-war on the contrasting views has been triggered by the several factors chief among them, the Chinese and Russian mega deals signed with Zimbabwe.
Last week, this paper published a story on leading British academic Professor Stephen Chan who recently said MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s time as a force to reckon with was over.
The claim that President Robert Mugabe’s victory in the July 31 2013 harmonised election ‘failed’ to secure him broad-based legitimacy which takes centre stage in the ICG report comes as no surprise.
It has in the past gained the ICG and local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) currency.
“The July 2013 election victory of the Zimbabwe African National Union — Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) failed to secure broad-based legitimacy for President Robert Mugabe, provide a foundation for fixing the economy, or normalise external relations,” reads the ICG report in part.
This is far from the truth.
The African Union (AU), Southern African Development Community (SADC) and other observer missions endorsed the election in question.
President Mugabe has since assumed chairmanship of SADC and will next year take over the reigns at AU.
Professor Chan observed soon after the elections that both the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) had decided ‘to take Zimbabwe into the future with the rest of Africa’.
The economy has been on the rebound through the abundant rainfall the country received in the last farming season and the Chinese and Russian deals.
A recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) said the number of people seeking food assistance will decline from 2,2 million to 560 000 next year.
The improvement in food security has been attributed to improved production on farms last season where farmers produced 1,4 million tonnes of maize, up from 758 000 the previous year.
Significantly, the country’s external relations have improved with Western countries jostling to get a bite of Zimbabwe’s cherry.
But this is Zimbabwe where history does not make groupings like ICG famous for worrying about the fate of other peoples.
“Zimbabwe is an insolvent and failing state, its politics zero sum, its institutions hollowing out, and its once vibrant economy moribund,” says the ICG.
If the Zimbabwe Government’s economic policies have failed, and the people know they have failed, why should it be necessary for the ICG and its allies to mobilise the entire ‘international community’ in order to prove that the policies have failed?
Second, what are these failed and futile policies that would warrant such a gigantic global mobilisation of resources in order to discredit them?
Failed policies are by their nature already discredited.
Why do they have to be discredited over and over again through the efforts of a white super- power grouping like ICG and its white allies?
Through this report the ICG is trying to sell the world a somewhat presumptuous pro-Zimbabwe policy by pretending to be in support of ‘stability’ both economically and politically.
But in reality this inclusive national dialogue deal rests on the exclusion from Zimbabwean politics of the man behind Africa’s economic renaissance, President Mugabe and his ruling ZANU PF party.
Why then should SADC and the AU push President Mugabe into dialogue when that chapter has been closed and Zimbabwe is on the road to recovery?
The strategy has always been to pressure SADC to ‘take’ action against Zimbabwe.
On July 4 2004 former United States Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Collin Powell wrote an article in the influential New York Times that claimed President Mugabe’s continued stay in power presented instability to the Southern African region.
In his attack on Zimbabwe titled ‘Freeing a Nation from the Grip of a Tyrant’, he said:
“If leaders on the continent (African) do not do more to convince President Mugabe to respect the rule of law and enter a dialogue with the political opposition, he and his cronies will drag Zimbabwe down until there is nothing left to ruin- and Zimbabwe’s implosion will continue to threaten the stability and prosperity of the region,” wrote Powell.
While in 2004 it was the US and the West making these noises today the ICG cuts a lonely figure doing the same.
But for the ICG it is now a case of too little too late.
The world has embraced Zimbabwe without the ICG.