THE latest report on Zimbabwe by Chatham House is no more than we expect from the British, the think tank’s handlers, but it is the continued questioning of ZANU PF’s ‘legitimacy’ in the document that makes interesting reading.
Aptly titled The Domestic and External Implications of Zimbabwe’s Economic Reform and Re-engagement Agenda, the report unsuccessfully tries to divert from real issues by latching on to the old and tired mantra of ZANU PF’s supposed legitimacy or lack thereof.
This is the argument that has been used by the MDC-T since their dismantling by ZANU PF in the July 31 2013 elections and polls held since its ill-fated September 11 1999 inception.
The strange complexion to the strategy has taken a new twist in recent times through an array of Western-funded organisations which have mushroomed seeking to violently topple the Government as witnessed by the trail of destruction they left during their so-called ‘peaceful’ demonstrations.
Both the organisations which go under the banner of hashtag movements and the MDC-T have been joined by the Chatham House in questioning ZANU PF’s legitimacy due to the prevailing harsh economic environment.
“Poorly implemented, populist and politically motivated Land Reform and Indigenisation Programmes hollowed out the rural economy and pushed Zimbabwe into a decade of implosion,” reads the report in part.
Revealingly, there is constant reference to so-called ‘poor governance, political reform and political crisis’ in order to make the report have appeal.
There is nothing new here.
Questioning legitimacy is a strategy that has been used to maximum effect by Western countries in order to make ZANU PF look ugly in the eyes of the public.
Any election held in Zimbabwe and won by ZANU PF is said to be not ‘free and fair’.
This is what this latest Chatham House Report seeks to feed into that narrative so as to give the MDC-T and hashtag movements’ new project traction.
“The challenge for the Government will be to manage this tension between long-term incremental change and popular demands for immediate economic relief, at a time when protest activism in Harare and other cities has tested state resilience in a new way,” says Chatham House.
In his latest instalment, prominent Saturday Herald columnist Nathaniel Manheru says the strategy of bringing into question ZANU PF’s alleged illegitimacy revolves around alternating the words ‘endgame’ and ‘tipping point’.
Manheru writes: “Early on in January 2003, our own Tony Hawkins had also penned a piece under the headline, ‘The Zimbabwe Crisis: Endgame Scenarios and Regional Implications’.
The vista was much broader, the envisaged impact more devastating.
Nor did this mark the end of the game, much as time marched on. Stephen Chan, another two years later, in 2005, wrote: ‘For him (Mugabe) too, his farm invasions, his repressions, this election were not some sad endgame’.”
Regular instalments on the issue have consistently come from the Western media.
One such is an article written on December 13 2000 by Chris McGreal.
Titled ‘Is Robert Mugabe a dictator?’ the article fatuously tries to label President Mugabe a dictator, an assertion questioned by many Zimbabweans.
McGreal says on December 13 2000:
“He was democratically elected three years ago, but many Zimbabweans are now wondering what their leader has become.
He is clearly no Idi Amin, Mobutu Sese Seko or Sani Abacha. Zimbabwe’s press is still among the most vigorous and outspoken in Africa, as demonstrated by the newspapers’ constant denunciations of Mr Mugabe.
And yet more and more Zimbabweans view their President as anything but a democrat.
Mr Mugabe’s supporters ask how a man elected with an overwhelming majority of the ballot in an indisputably free election just three years ago can be called a dictator.”
Yet another article by one James Kirchick in the Los Angeles Times on September 30 2007 titled, ‘Mugabe: a tyrant from the start’ again brings to the fore the issue of legitimacy.
The article says: “As Zimbabwe’s President, Robert Mugabe, presides over what might be the most rapid disintegration yet of a modern nation-state, it has become de rigueur for journalists, politicians and academics to offer what has become a near-universal analysis: Mugabe, who has ruled his country uninterrupted for 27 years, was a promising leader who became corrupted over time by power.
Four years ago, in response to these raids, the New York Times editorialised that ‘in 23 years as president, Mr. Mugabe has gone from independence hero to tyrant’. Earlier this week, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said that ‘I’m just devastated by what I can’t explain, by what seems to be an aberration, this sudden change in character’.
In the 2005 political thriller The Interpreter, Nicole Kidman played a dashing, multilingual exile from the fictional African country of Matobo, whose ruler was once a soft-spoken, cerebral schoolteacher who liberated his country from a white minority regime but became a despot. Mugabe certainly understood the likeness; he accused Kidman and her costar, Sean Penn, of being part of a CIA plot to oust him.”
It is clear from Chatham House’s latest offering that there is growing frustration within the West to locate an area from which the issue of legitimacy can resonate with Zimbabweans’ aspirations in order to make regime change possible.
No amount of propaganda has thus far managed to convince Zimbabweans to loosen their firm grip on issues to do with sovereignty.
As we march towards 2018, it is undeniable that the season of false reports against the country is upon us.
But who says opinion reports matter?
After all in the US election, Donald Trump showed us this week they matter little to a people who know their destiny.