Tsvangirai’s tour sends wrong signal

That message was audaciously if not recklessly put on the table in Washington last Friday by President Barrack Obama when he welcomed Prime Minister Tsvangirai to the Oval Office, where he told him that the United States is not ready to work with or give money to the coalition government, but is happy to release a paltry US$73 million directly to the people of Zimbabwe purportedly to help alleviate their plight.
Unfortunately and in a needlessly grateful response that is stereotypical of a happy slave, Prime Minister Tsvan-girai allowed Obama to get away with his mischief by not challenging his rogue distinction between the people of Zimbabwe and their government.
Obama’s notion, shared by his European allies and their local puppets in the so-called civic society, that Zimbabwe’s coalition government is something different and separate from the people of Zimbabwe is totally absurd and must be resisted by all right thinking Zimbabweans.
Without overstretching the otherwise well established principle that every country gets the type of government that it deserves, and without forgetting that the coalition government is an outcome of the so-called Global Political Agreement (GPA) signed between ZANU-PF and the two MDC formations on September 15 2008, it is an undeniable fact that the results of the March 29 2008 harmonised elections produced an unav-oidable and absolute need for a coalition government of one form or another.
This is because the election failed to produce an outright winner in Parliament or the Presidency. Through the exercise of their democratic right to establish a government to represent them as a nation, which they did on March 29 2008 in an electoral manner that was by all accounts free and fair, the people of Zimbabwe voted for a coalition government.
Although it took quite some time for that government to be formed given the understandable protracted negotiations that ensued, the democratic fact that is there for everyone to see is that a coalition government was eventually formed on February 13 to reflect the electoral will of the people of Zimbabwe as expr-essed on March 29 2008.
As far as outsiders such as Obama and his European counterparts are concerned, the only important consideration to guide them in their international engagement with Zimbabwe is simply and only the fact that the Republic of Zimbabwe has in place a coalition government that reflects the democratic will of the people who have supported their government and have wished it well with the goodwill of their neighbours in SADC and the African Union.
What this means is that Obama and his European allies have no business micromanaging the coalition government or prescribing policies or even a reform agenda by setting for it performance targets or benchmarks of any kind.
The policy or programme performance of the coalition government is ent-irely the democratic responsibility of the people of Zimbabwe and nobody else. Only Zimbabweans will discharge that responsibility by hol-ding the coalition government acco-untable through Pa-rliament and finally at the next polls.
This would inde-ed be the case in any other democratic country including in the United States where Obama’s administration is not facing international isolation on grounds that it is not implementing a number of expected reforms promised during the election campaign.
Why then does Obama imagine that he and his ruling friends in Europe can get away with the fiction that the coalition government is different and separate from the people of Zimbabwe whom the international community can engage directly without working through the government?
One thing is clear. By making a spurious and a creepy distinction between the people of Zimbabwe and their government in order to create a cover for imposing a neo-colonial agenda with regime change benchmarks disguised as reform targets, Obama in effect reminded us that an American president by any other name and of any colour is plainly a Yankee doing the same old dirty bidding for Uncle Sam done by his predecessors since the days of slavery.
Although he employs high sounding rhetoric laced with catchy sound bites as part of an overly ambitious ideological exercise to reinvent the United States whose international image was irretrievably battered by George W Bush and his torture chambers, and although he seeks to portray America as a born again nation with a new foundation based on universal human values, the compelling fact that remains unbroken is that Obama is not substantively different from Bush or Tony Blair or Gordon Brown save that his approach uses the language of friendly fascism where others used brutal force and crude propaganda.
For these reasons, by letting Obama to distort and misrepresent the relationship betw-een the people of Zimbabwe and their government at his expense in the full glare of the international media without challenging him to set the record straight about the provable fact that the coalition government does indeed represent the people of Zimbabwe who elected it, Prime Minister Tsvangirai served to remind us yet again that he has not done enough if anything to free himself from persistent accusations that he is a willing puppet of unrepentant neo-colonialists like Obama and his Euro-peans.
While Obama’s mischievous distinction between the people of Zimbabwe and their coalition government was bad, what was worse and insulting in the extreme was that he thought giving US$73 million directly to Zimbabweans outside their government is a great favour warranting his praise all the way to the high heavens. To be sure US$73 million is a whole lot of money in the pocket of an individual and even in the coffers of a company. But it is peanuts for a country whose people desperately need at least US$8, 3 billion to turnaround their economy, which has been melting down for some 10 years partly as a result of illegal economic sanctions imposed by the US and some European countries on political grounds.
If Obama really cared about the people of Zimbabwe as implied by his hollow rhetoric, he would have known their true needs and would have offered a meaningful contribution to justify his propaganda.
Even though Obama claimed that his administration would be releasing the US$73 million directly to the people of Zimbabwe to recognise Prime Minister Tsvangirai’s alleged leadership and commitment to democracy, the unspoken fact is that most of that money will pay for the salaries and offices of Americans whose main work is to spy on Zimbabwe and to destabilise it under the cover of development assistance while some of it will underwrite the costs and salaries of local NGOs that have been specifically formed and are funded by the US government to pursue, articulate and defend American interests in the country including in the political arena where Prime Minister Tsvangirai’s MDC-T has made no secret of its unholy alliance with George W. Bush’s Republican Party. Only a tiny bit will actually find its ways to the stomachs of ordinary people or to buy medicine for them. Some of it might even be used to buy killer trucks that are dangerously roaming our roads looking for the next high-profile target.
The time has come for Zimbabweans to demand total accountability from the NGOs that are preparing to receive the US$73 million that Obama has said is meant for the people of Zimbabwe. Which NGOs are these? What do they do? Whom do they represent?
It should go without saying that the people of Zimbabwe know how to hold accountable the coalition government which is established in terms of the law.  As such, there’s no problem about finding the means of following the money that the government receives from foreign sources as that can be done through the Comptroller Auditor General and indeed through Parliament itself which is the representative of the people.
But how are the people of Zimbabwe supposed to follow the money that Obama intends to send his NGOs in the name of the people?  How does Obama propose that such money will be accounted?  Should we assume that parallel structures, running like a parallel government, will be setup in Zimbabwe by the United States government through its own NGOs to keep a tab on the US$73 million that is supposedly coming for the people?
Could it be that, after making a lot of noise about the alleged wrongs of the RBZ’s quasi-fiscal activities which were in fact undertaken by the government through government structures, Obama wants to institute in Zimbabwe extra-fiscal activities that will see selected government functions and structures linked to the MDC T being funded from Ameri-can money channelled through NG-Os outside the government for political purposes?  What’s worse between extr-a-fiscal activities and quasi-fiscal activities?
Indeed, it is appropriate to ask and wonder whether we are not seeing the development of an illegal MDC-T government pursuing a sinister political agenda funded by the Americans and their European friends and operating within the coalition government which we all along thought is there for all Zimbabweans. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that while US$73 million cannot turnaround our national economy, it can most certainly fund, oil and turnaround a political party.
There are reasons for the nation to be vigilant about this real threat without going overboard. Just three weeks ago, well known functionaries of the Bush’s Republican Party based in South Africa organised and ran a strategic seminar for the MDC-T in Johannesburg which was attended by scores of senior members of the party’s national executive including at least one who is a cabinet minister in the very same coalition government that Obama does not recognise. 
It is not difficult to see how some of the US$73 million that Obama says he’s giving directly to the people of Zimbabwe to the detriment of their coalition government is in fact intended for more such political seminars by the Republican Party and maybe that explains why Prime Minister Tsvangirai did not see anything amiss when Obama insulted him by offering a trifle US$73 million to the people of Zimbabwe who in fact urgently need a whooping US$8, 3 billion. 
Taking place ahead of the MDC-T’s recent annual conference, the American run seminar’s objective was essentially political and that can mean anything in these days of coalition politics where some of the strategies of the three ruling parties involve elbowing each other out of power well in advance of the next general election due in 44 months.
Obama and his European friends know only too well about the dangers of foreign funding of political activities in their countries.
They simply do not allow it and the punishment for those who engage in it is severe to say the least.  If Obama truly believes that there are universal human values that define political practice the world over, why does he imagine that it is okay for foreign money from foreign governments to fund political activities under the guise of promoting democracy in Zimbabwe through NGOs but it is not okay for foreign funding from foreign governments to promote democracy through foreign created NGOs in the United States?  Isn’t what is good for the gander also good for the goose?
Where do universal human values that Obama is speaking so much about these days start and end? Zimbabweans would be well advised not to be fooled.  The fact of the matter is that universal human values and ideals are wonderful but all good politics is local and the rest is propaganda.

– Jonathan Moyo is the Member of Parliament for Tsholotsho North.