Britain's Guardian: An apologia for imperialist intervention in Zimbabwe

On March 14, in the immediate aftermath President Robert Mugabe's election victory in Zimbabwe, the Guardian newspaper published an editorial pronouncing its verdict on the result.

The Guardian has, along with its predecessor the Manchester Guardian, been the voice of English liberalism for almost two centuries, priding itself on its encouragement of critical debate. As such it has a very definite constituency amongst the educated middle class. Undoubtedly therefore, some of its readers will have been concerned about the open colonial character of the recent British intervention in Zimbabwean affairs. The country's opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) received financial and political support from Britain and even before the election had taken place, Prime Minister Tony Blair demanded an MDC victory and stated openly that no other result would be acceptable.

The purpose of the March 14 editorial was to answer a priori whatever objections might be stirring in the minds of Guardian readers and to further British efforts to destabilise Zimbabwe. The editorial railed against the "mealy-mouthed prevarications of the South Africans and Nigerians", the "arrogant party hacks of Zanu-PF and their violent rent-a-mob thugs... corrupt police and military, a castrated judiciary and muzzled press... and all those heads of state and politicians in southern Africa who connived, finessed, double-dealed and conspired to look the other way."

Instead of addressing the historical circumstances that had given rise to the situation in Zimbabwe, the editorial posed a series of objections only to dismiss them as utterly irrelevant.

"It is true, but no defence, to say that worse abuses occur elsewhere in the world and go uncondemned," it said. Having admitted that worse electoral abuses and attacks on democratic rights take place regularly all over the world, the Guardian clearly does not see any responsibility to explain why is it that Mugabe has been selected for demonisation out of the many African presidents who have been returned to office by even more fraudulent and violent elections. Instead the editorial continued, "It is true, but no excuse, that the west is often guilty of double standards."

Again, this is crucial political issue is not questioned. The West's double standards, which have resulted in close collaboration with dictatorial regimes all over the world, are simply presented as being of no consequence.

Finally, and most astonishingly, the editorial claims, "It is a fact, but barely relevant, that Britain's colonialists bear much historical guilt." Thus the role of British imperialism, the crimes committed in its name and its enduring legacy, are written off as "barely relevant". But how is it possible to understand present events in Zimbabwe or anywhere else without a knowledge of history-and of the impact of British imperialism's oppression of the African masses?

The former name of Zimbabwe-Southern Rhodesia-reminds us that from 1889 to 1922 the country was run as a British mandate by a commercial company set up by royal charter-Cecil Rhodes' British South Africa Company (BSA). All the wealth of the country passed into the hands of the British invaders. On 12 September 1890 Rhodes raised the British flag and formally "took possession" of Mashonaland and all it contained. When he conquered the Ndebele region by military invasion, the opposition of the indigenous people was declared "a rebellion" and virtually all their land and cattle passed into white hands.

When Matabeleland was subjugated, villages were burnt down to make room for the white settlers and for mining camps. Labour was made available for the mines and the land through the imposition of a labour-tax law. In 1896 the Ndebele uprising against BSA rule was brutally crushed. Landless peasants were forced to live in "locations" in areas of the country devoid of fertile soil, water and wild game. The Saturday Review of August 26, 1896 wrote, "Permanent peace there cannot be in countries like Mashona and Matabeleland until the blacks are either exterminated or driven into the centre of Africa." That was the spirit of the rule of the BSA on behalf of the British colonial power.

This was the way that British rule began in Southern Rhodesia. It is but a small part of Britain's colonial history, which the Guardian editorial insists is "barely relevant".

The legacy of Rhodes continued in the twentieth century. From 1923 Southern Rhodesia, though still part of the British Empire, became a self-governing colony, ruled by the white minority. Seven years later the Land Apportionment Act made it illegal for Africans to own or rent property in towns in the greater part of the country. A formal colour bar in employment was introduced in 1934, under the Industrial Conciliation Act, which excluded "natives" from the definition of "employees".

After the Second World War tens of thousands of British immigrants arrived in Southern Rhodesia and settled on land that had been designated as "white" areas by driving Africans from their homes. The Rhodesian authorities attempted to crush the rising nationalist challenge. In 1959 the African National Congress (ANC) was banned and hundreds of activists were imprisoned.

In 1965 the Ian Smith government signed a proclamation declaring its independence from Britain. The limited rights that Africans had achieved in the previous period were withdrawn. The Zanu and Zapu national movements were banned and their supporters incarcerated.

As the liberation struggle developed, thousands of Africans were uprooted from their homes and herded into "new villages" to cut off food and information from the guerrilla forces. New pass laws were introduced that limited the right of Africans to enter the towns. During the whole period of the Smith regime, the country was covertly supported by British capitalism, animated by the knowledge that its interests were being protected.

In 1980 Mugabe came to power, having led the bitter liberation struggle against the white rulers and being imprisoned by the Smith regime for 10 years. He was elected as president of Zimbabwe after the Lancaster House agreement of 1979, which was designed to safeguard British interests and the white farmers in the face of massive social and political resistance. Two years later the British turned a blind eye to his brutal suppression of the political opposition in Matabeleland. This was no doubt an example of the West's "double standards" that the Guardian is so eager to dismiss.

For years Mugabe has functioned as a trusted defenders of international capital. But from 1998 he fell out of favour with the West because he was felt unable to carry out IMF policies with the necessary vigour, without provoking a social explosion. Thus the British establishment turned to the MDC.

In seeking to assuage the genuine concerns that Britain's backing of the MDC is aimed at installing a pro-Western regime, the Guardian editorial endeavours to whip up moral fervour amongst the more disoriented layers of the middle class. Hence the extraordinary epithets, "the mealy-mouthed prevarications", the "massive fraud" the "intimidation and skulduggery of every kind", and so on.

It continued, "In Zimbabwe, here and now, before our very eyes, in broad daylight, a new class of criminals has been caught red-handed in the act of committing grand larceny, and they and only they are responsible. In defying common sense and decency, justice and the law, in ignoring international opinion and their own international obligations, they decisively broke with the past. In Zimbabwe, today is the beginning of history."

Like a priest preparing a sermon damning the heathen sinners, one can almost see the expression of pious self-satisfaction on the author's face as he pens his purple prose. But in reality Mugabe's undoubtedly oppressive methods are being used to excuse the far greater crimes being prepared by Number 10, the Foreign Office and MI6.

The Guardian is a past master at this type of political chicanery. Although it publishes dissenting articles from time to time, the general thrust of its editorials is to support British imperialism's military and colonial adventures overseas by portraying them as great moral causes. It justified Western intervention in the Balkans by whipping up hysteria over the treatment of Kosovo Albanians. It supported British intervention in Sierra Leone that has made the country an effective British protectorate on the basis of the atrocities carried out by the anti-government forces. Now it demands its readers support whatever actions Britain takes in Zimbabwe on the basis of Mugabe's election fraud.

In recent weeks, the Guardian has strenuously opposed the British government renewing its military intervention in Iraq, calling on Blair to "climb out of President Bush's pocket". But at all times its position is calculated on what it sees as best serving the interests of British imperialism, not those of the oppressed masses. It objects to Blair's militarism only when he endangers the strategic interests of British business in the Middle East due to his desire to cultivate close relations with Washington. Then, and only then, does the tone of the Guardian shift to appeals for balanced judgments based on a consideration of the type of historical and political complexities it dismisses as irrelevant when determining policy in Zimbabwe. Africa, after all, is the traditional stomping ground of British imperialism. The Guardian clearly hopes it will be an arena in which Blair can establish a measure of independence from US foreign policy and secure Britain's own place in a renewed struggle to carve up the world.

The depths to which it will stoop to achieve this end is encapsulated in the editorial's summary statement of its diatribe, insisting that "today is the beginning of history." In other words the Guardian wishes to wipe the historical slate clean and thus give British imperialism carte blanche for whatever combination of punitive economic sanctions, dirty tricks operations by the secret services and/or military interventions might be necessary in order to ensure that the Zimbabwean masses are once again ruled according to British diktat. That is the real impulse behind the newspaper's howls of righteous indignation directed against the Mugabe regime.

Daily Telegraph African nations still waste aid, so the West must intervene****All of which - although it is the last thing Western leaders want to hear - makes the case for at least selective direct intervention ineluctable. A relatively small detachment of British troops has quite quickly been able to turn round the situation in Sierra Leone. One really has to ask whether it is sensible - or moral - for the international community, which is clearly going to be asked to pick up the pieces in Zimbabwe once Mugabe goes, to allow him not only to inflict enormous suffering now on the hapless population, but also to make ultimate recovery far harder by running the country into the ground. It would only need a single British paratroop battalion to cause Mugabe's house of cards to collapse, to the delight of the local population. It would be a no-casualty, one-day war.****

The perils of designer tribalism- [Excerpt] Part of what makes The Tears of the White Man such an important book is Bruckner's sensitivity to the aerodynamics of liberal guilt. He understands what launches it, what keeps it aloft, and how we might lure it safely back to earth. He understands that the entire phenomenon of Third Worldism is fueled by the moral ecstasy of overbred guilt. Bruckner is an articulate anatomist of such guilt and its attendant deceptions and mystifications. "An overblown conscience," he points out, "is an empty conscience."

-- Compassion ceases if there is nothing but compassion, and revulsion turns to insensitivity. Our "soft pity," as Stefan Zweig calls it, is stimulated, because guilt is a convenient substitute for action where action is impossible. Without the power to do anything, sensitivity becomes our main aim, the aim is not so much to do anything, as to be judged. Salvation lies in the verdict that declares us to be wrong.

The universalization-which is to say the utter trivialization-of compassion is one side of Third Worldism. Another side is the inversion of traditional moral and intellectual values. Europe once sought to bring enlightenment-literacy, civil society, modern technology-to benighted parts of the world. It did so in the name of progress and civilization. The ethic of Third Worldism dictates that yesterday's enlightenment be rebaptized as today's imperialistic oppression. For the committed Third Worldist, Bruckner points out,

-- salvation consists not only in a futile exchange of influences, but in the recognition of the superiority of foreign thought, in the study of their doctrines, and in conversion to their dogma. We must take on our former slaves as our models. . . . It is the duty and in the interest of the West to be made prisoner by its own barbarians.

Whatever the current object of adulation- the wisdom of the East, tribal Africa, Aboriginal Australia, pre-Columbian America -the message is the same: the absolute superiority of Otherness. The Third Worldist looks to the orient, to the tribal, to the primitive not for what they really are but for their evocative distance from the reality of modern European society and values.

It is all part of what Bruckner calls "the enchanting music of departure." Its siren call is seductive but also supremely mendacious. Indeed, the messy reality of the primitive world-its squalor and poverty, its penchant for cannibalism, slavery, gratuitous cruelty, and superstition-are carefully edited out of the picture. In their place we find a species of Rousseauvian sentimentality. Rousseau is the patron saint of Third Worldism. "Ignoring the real human race entirely," Rousseau wrote in a passage Bruckner quotes from the Confessions, "I imagined perfect beings, with heavenly virtue and beauty, so sure in their friendship, so tender and faithful, that I could never find anyone like them in the real world." The beings with whom Rousseau populated his fantasy life are exported to exotic lands by the Third Worldist. As Rousseau discovered, the unreality of the scenario, far from being an impediment to moral smugness, was an invaluable asset. Reality, after all, has a way of impinging upon fantasy, clipping its wings, limiting its exuberance. So much the worse, then, for reality. As Bruckner notes, in this romance adepts "were not looking for a real world but the negation of their own. . . . An eternal vision is projected on these nations that has nothing to do with their real history." [End Excerpt]

Gadaafi's money and muscle given to re-elect Mugabe [Excerpt] "It's amazing", said one Zimbabwean farmer who did not wish to be named, "how black or Arab racism gets overlooked. Whenever we hear racists being denounced it always means whites. But on Heroes Day we had to listen to (Vice President) Joe Msika telling us that whites were not even humans." From Lusaka Gadaafi drove down to Harare in a 150 car motorcade, his army of amazon women bodyguards virtually taking over Harare. He publicly embraced Mugabe's views in an extraordinary TV appearance in which he announced that Africa was for the Africans and that whites must go back to Europe and only be allowed to stay on as servants. It was also announced that Gadaafi had promised Mugabe $586 million in fuel supplies and had made a $900,000 election contribution to the funds of Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party.

This contribution was made in flat contravention of a law just enacted by Mugabe forbidding foreign donations to Zimbabwean political parties, a law which is being used to hound the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and prevent it from gaining support abroad for its challenge to Mugabe in the coming presidential election. Gadaafi, who has never tolerated an opposition party, is unlikely to have been bothered by this contradiction. However, the Sunday Times has learnt, Gadaafi's aid went some way beyond this. The purchase of Gracelands was in itself a financial coup for Mugabe. He was built the house for his wife Grace withe Z$6 million he stole from the Pay-For-Your-House scheme set up to provide low cost housing for junior civil servants. Harare's courageous independent press discovered the scam. Most junior civil servants have received no benefit from the contributions they were forced to make to the scheme, and Grace, embarrassed by the scandal, never used the house after it was finished in 1997. Thereafter the house was repeatedly offered at sale for Z$25 million, but Mugabe could find no takers until Gadaafi handsomely paid him Z$35 million for it.

More sinister is the fact that Gadaafi insisted on calling into conclave Harare's small community of Indian Muslims, telling them that they must assist Mugabe's plans by declaring a jihad (holy war) to throw the whites out. If they did not do this, he told the Muslim elders, he would bring in strong arm men from the Pagad movement in Cape Town with which he had close links. There has long been speculation that Gadaafi might have links to Pagad, an extremist Muslim vigilante movement often linked to bombings and murders in the Cape, including bomb attacks on US-linked enterprises such as the Planet Hollywood restaurant on the Cape waterfront, but this is the first open confirmation of the fact. The bulk of Harare's Muslim community, consisting largely of merchants and professionals, was aghast at this demand and has failed to declare a jihad ,a failure which they believe lies behind the sudden spate of attacks on Muslim shops by Zanu-PF youths in the last ten days.

For heaven's sake, said one Muslim merchant, we all do business with whites all the time. We rely on them and most of us are appalled by what Mugabe's doing. It's obvious that those youths who were sent to attack white and Muslim shops were meant to be punishing us for not complying. However, Gadaafi - like Mugabe a virtual paranoiac in matters of personal security - had also left behind two extra bodyguards for Mugabe and four specialist coordinators. These men are believed to have experience in the training and handling of death squads and they have, in the last month, bought up 20 houses right around Zimbabwe to act as safe houses for the squads. The houses are strategically scattered only four are in Harare and there is one in every regional town or centre of any size. [End Excerpt]

The article is special pleading by a Marxist on behalf of a Marxist.

To do so, Ms Slaughter has to ignore or excuse the thuggery, murder and mayhem occurring today in Zimbabwe, and she uses the excesses and offences of the past so to do.

Today, teenage girls are being raped in Zimbabwe by Zanu PF and "war veteran" thugs.

Today men, women and children are being beaten and tortured for the crime of supporting an opposition party in Zimbabwe.

Today people are going hungry in Zimbabwe, a nation that was once the breadbasket of southern Africa.

Today, food is being used as a weapon of opression in Zimbabwe.

Today, people are being murdered in Zimbabwe

Today, people are disappearing in Zimbabwe.

Today, 200,000 blacks, the people for whom Ms Slaughter's heart bleeds, are displaced within Zimbabwe.

And who is doing all this? Neo-colonialists? White farmers? City dwellers?

No, it is Zanu PF thugs and so-called "war veterans", most of whom were infants or unborn at the time of the chimurenga, sanctioned by Mugabe and his government.

A small percentage of Mugabe's victims are white.

Those whites had prepared to surrender their farms and leave when the Second Chimurenga was won by Mugabe in 1980.

They stayed only because Mugabe himself eloquently persuaded them to stay and help build a new heterogenous Zimbabwe.

They employed hundreds of thousands of black workers and made Zimbabwe a net agrarian exporting nation until Mugabe kicked over the cart.

But most of Mugabe's victims, now and in the past (remember the Matabeleland Massacres) are blacks.

Whites are less than one percent of the population.

It is blacks who are being displaced from the farm villages

It is blacks who who are living hard in the bush instead of being gainfully employed on the farms.

It is blacks who are being driven into the cities to swell the ranks of the unemployed.

It is blacks who are risking crocodile attacks to cross the river into South Africa as refugees.

It is blacks who have to stand in line for days to buy maize meal and who then have to travel to the rural areas to share the maize with their parents who are being denied meal by government thugs. Meal which was promised to them to win an election.

It is blacks who are being beaten, raped, killed, starved and displaced.

And who benefits by the farm invasions? Landless rural blacks? No way.

It is Zanu PF cadre and urban civil servants with no knowledge whatsoever of farming who are taking ownership of the dismantled farms and who are busily destroying Zim agriculture with their incompetence and short-sightedness.

It is also a much smaller number of people moving onto the seized farms than were displaced by the invasions.

There comes a time when an adult must stop blaming his parents for their abuses during his dependency and to take responsibility for his own life. An adult who fails to do so is a psychopath.

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