Ambassador Wutaunashe's Rebuttal to an Indian Newspaper 'The Hindu'

17 July 2007

The Editor, The Hindu New Delhi

The article “A Country in Crisis” (The Hindu, 15 July) struck me as a confession of sin, ill will and desperation on the part of the imperialist mind. Nasty as it was meant to be, the article ironically helps to expose the mindset of the enemies of Zimbabwe's freedom, who are driven by a passion to reverse the democratic result of an African nation's struggle against the terror, oppression and despotism of a colonial regime that these racists supported.

It is one thing to report factually that Zimbabwe is battling inflation, but quite another to weave into the facts a web of blatant lies. Anyone who visits Zimbabwe will see immediately that the use of the word “chaos” in describing the country is motivated by pure malice. Indeed, the feedback from those who do visit invariably offers plaudits to the people and their Government for the dignified and methodical manner in which they are tackling economic challenges that have been brought about by the vindictive actions of those who wanted all productive land to remain in the hands of a privileged minority, and the indigenous majority to be condemned in perpetuity to continue as cheapened, impoverished labour. In their desperation to break the spirit of Zimbabwean patriots, these wicked personalities have blocked all multilateral fiscal and financial assistance to Zimbabwe, and even went as far as opposing global funding for HIV/AIDS interventions, interdicting fuel supplies on the high seas through the use of bribes and issuing a special, standardized lexicon to their compliant media for use in abusing Zimbabwe and its liberators. It is instructive that these bigots never called Ian Smith a terrorist, insisting rather on the perverse employment of that nomenclature to describe Zimbabwe's liberators. It is interesting that the author of the article is maintaining that tradition in his labelling of Zimbabwe's Africans.

The silly idea that the Commonwealth should be used as an agency for undemocratic regime change in Zimbabwe is astonishing not merely on account of its combination of non sequitur and nonsense, but more dramatically on account of its assumption that the reader knows nothing. Zimbabwe is not a member of the Commonwealth, and everybody knows that. The real insult lies in the author's counselling of the British Government to go into shallow cover for the purpose of puppeteering. The author has the temerity to suggest that self-respecting African Presidents will be supple volunteers for such a despicable, treasonable exercise. The African race deserves much more respect.

For all practical purposes, the author of the article is an agent of racist imperialism, a fact he illustrates well by his choice of allies in traitors who call for the recolonisation of their own country. Of course, self-respecting Africans who are now tilling the ancestral lands that had been stolen from them by colonialists would yield inconvenient quotes, so no reference is made to them in the article.

An example of the mendacious lexicon concocted by Zimbabwe's enemies and issued to guided media is the assertion that “people are starving” in Zimbabwe, and that they are “subject to violence and oppression at the hands of the Government”. These formulations were invented for a malicious purpose, and those who disseminate them seem to count on readers accepting them as truth without checking. It is known that Zimbabwe is one of the most peaceful countries in the world, and that its robust enforcement of laws that protect citizens from violence has indeed frustrated forces that have tried to induce violence as a means to create the chaos they need for the purpose of unseating a strong, pro-people African Government.

Fortunately, most readers know that not a single person has died of hunger in Zimbabwe, as the Government has ensured that, even in the last five years of drought and erratic rains, food reaches all corners of the country, and is distributed to all who need it, including refugees from other countries who have found a safe haven in Zimbabwe.

There are no polite words to describe the author's outrageous, presumptuous paternalism in thinking that countries of the South need demagogues of the North to tell them the areas in which to cooperate. What he hates is the fact that Zimbabwe's world-class journalists had the courage to expose Northern hypocrisy during the years when Zimbabwe needed friends to help it topple the Smith regime, and have continued in the post-independence era to advocate democratic values and economic and social justice, including at the global level, concepts that are inconvenient to the designs of some circles. He therefore wants those authentic, world-wise and patriotic journalists banished from the profession. Indeed, when one reads guided Northern journalism as reflected in some newspapers, the strong temptation is to offer northern journalists retraining in countries of the South, and particularly in Zimbabwe.

It is befuddling that the article advocates “the reform of land ownership”, unless what the writer wants to say is that the land should be grabbed from its rightful owners, to whom it was restored by Zimbabwe's Land Reform Programme, and given to strangers. That mischief the people of Zimbabwe, who went to war to get their land back, will never allow.

Notice must also be served to the author of the unfortunate and disingenuous article that the Zimbabwean people and their Government long ago deciphered the euphemism “strengthening civil society and democratic institutions” when used by people who opposed the war of liberation that brought democracy to Zimbabwe. This particular stringing of words has been used as a subterfuge to facilitate the corrupt recruitment of personalities to assist in weakening democratic institutions, legitimate civil society organisations and the sovereignty on which viable structures must be founded. Zimbabweans and their Government are vigilant against such corrupt abuse of monetary incentives to subvert their country.

Jonathan Wutawunashe

AMBASSADOR OF ZIMBABWE