REASON WAFAWAROVA SAYS: "ZIM OPPOSITION INTOLERANT!"

Zimbabwe: Zim Opposition Intolerant

 

The Herald

 

Reason Wafawarova

Harare

 

http://allafrica.com/stories/200705100200.html?viewall=1

 

 

SOMETIMES one wonders what people living under a polarised political environment stand to either benefit or lose as many adopt a callous culture of intolerance where they feel they can only read or listen to what they want to hear.

Winston Churchill talked of jaws and not wars when he was confronted with the complexity of international conflict in the early 1940s. The international, or geopolitical, system is one of diversity where ideologically one has to live up to the fact that capitalism, socialism and communism are ideological realities which won't go away simply because one says they can't stand them.

Politically, democracies differ in models: from representative democracy, as seen in many parliamentary democracies; mass democracy, as Hugo Chavez is implementing with his 21st century socialism; corporate democracy, as is found in the United States, where corporate power determines who is in government more than the people; all the way to guided democracy, as is the case in some Islamic states like Libya and Iran.

Power politics or real politik dictates that some countries are more powerful than others and that the power within countries can be used in different ways and targeted at different strategic points. It is always crystal-clear that aspects of the geopolitical processes, such as human rights, liberties and international law, are always viewed from various perspectives as motivated by cultural values, political views, religion, age and social interaction.

While ethnocentrism would have some believing that the whole world should see the world from their own ethnic point of view, the real situation is always that cultures differ the way sub-communities, families and individuals will always differ.

This, inevitably, entails that conflict can only be solved by communication; either at individual, cross-cultural or inter-group levels.

This is not a socio-political lecture, but a reality based on the intolerance being exhibited by some of our Zimbabwean citizens, especially those in the so-called Diaspora community. The political process in Zimbabwe is divided, as is the situation in many countries. At the moment that division centres mainly between the ruling Zanu-PF party and the opposition MDC.

Generally, the MDC is a protest movement with a default support base of disgruntled former Zanu-PF supporters as well as discontented workers and urban families that cannot stand the declining economy since the collapse of the deceptive International Monetary Funded-prescribed Economic Structural Adjust-ment Programme in the second half of the 1990s as well as the ruinous sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the US, the European Union, Australia, Canada and New Zealand after the land reform programme was launched in 2000.

On the other hand, Zanu-PF is a political party with a liberation legacy, the majority rule philosophy and grassroots policies, such as the land reform programme.

Pro-opposition opinion pieces in the media portray Zanu-PF as a party of murderous thugs at the command of a ruthless dictator, that despite the fact that President Mugabe holds massive star rallies across the country at least twice every six years, the last being in the 2005 general election.

This is the analysis that some people cannot stand. They can't fight it by reason. Rather, they resort to such buffoonish grandstanding as is seen in the foolishness of advocating that those residing or studying in the West must necessarily support all Western policies as well as endorsing the MDC as a bona fide democratic movement before they swear themselves in as avowed critics of President Mugabe and his Government.

One wonders if it ever occurs to some people that much as they are of the conviction that Zanu-PF is a dictator's party, there are many out there who are more than convinced that the MDC is not only a protest party, but one led by hopeless puppets only good at outlining the country's problems with no clue on how such problems can be solved outside handing the problems together with the country to their "democratic masters" in the West.

While Zanu-PF has a lot of planning and implementation to do as the ruling party, those in the MDC should know that they have a lot of policy explaining to do; far more than the protesting they are bent on pursuing.

That way it is jaws and not wars.

The MDC has representatives in both chambers of Parliament -- the House of Assembly and the Senate -- and one of the factions has its headquarters strategically located in the central business district, while the other has its own base just five kilometres from the city centre, in Hillside. However, one gets the impression that the MDC is similar to Ugandan rebel Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army that is headquartered in the middle of the jungles of Uganda without any semblance of legal existence or tolerance.

The MDC has held countless political rallies across the country, some successful some abortive; but they only care to tell the world of those rallies they attempted to turn into mass protests and were accordingly thwarted.

When one speaks like this, our intolerant fellow countrymen residing in the Western Diaspora see red and become combative, physically that is. They want some form of emotional or physical pain inflicted on whoever allows their minds to see the MDC as a party lacking in one aspect or the other.

They want to set the Western authorities on such individuals in the hope that some kind of punishment may be meted out on their perceived nemesis.

Surely one would expect those posturing as champions of free speech and expression would also not want to be seen as the masters of brutality against divergent opinion. This writer thinks what has happened in Zimbabwe in the past seven years is clear testimony that wielding Western threats to achieve some political end is but a futile exercise.

The media in Zimbabwe is full of political opinions from both sides of the political divide and those who want to be part of the political process should aspire to engage themselves at this level of debate instead of pursuing primitive and laughable strategies as is portrayed in the so-called Fair Deal campaign on the rabid website going by the name Zimdaily.com.

There, some of the Zimbabweans in the Diaspora are of the opinion that they can silence opinion by wielding threats of a Western nature or even fooling themselves into believing that they can whip all Zimbabweans in the Diaspora into following the MDC line simply because the MDC has sympathy with the ruling elite of some Western countries.

This writer believes some of the people holding such opinions need to be reminded that there is a lot of company in anti-capitalist politics in the West and that some in the West do not see the MDC as an alternative solution to the challenges in Zimbabwe.

 

 

Rational debate on the political processes in Zimbabwe, Africa and the world is not going to be aborted because there are some Zimbabweans who use lies about or hate for President Mugabe as an excuse for living in Western countries do not want it.

That is simply not possible.

 

 Reason Wafawarova is a post- graduate student reading for a Master's degree in International Relations at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

 

MORE ABOUT REASON WAFAWAROVA:

 

http://zimgossiper.blogspot.com/2007/04/who-can-assist-reason-wafawarova-once.html

 

AND

 

http://zimgossiper.blogspot.com/2007/04/that-reason-wafawarova-studying-in.html

 

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