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Moyo at the Zanu-PF headquarters in Harare. The development was described as a step towards rebuilding relations between the US and the revolutionary party which the US so loves to hate.
Of course, the American diplomat repeated the deceptively blithe statement which he has been to town with that the US does not favour, or for that matter hate, any one party in the country.
It will not do anybody any good to waste time pointing out just how dishonest Ambassador Ray is on this score, with all due respect to the diplomat.
The record speaks for itself especially through Zidera with which the US seeks to undermine the President Mugabe-led Zanu-PF party by putting its members on sanctions and by crippling the Government which Zanu-PF at one time exclusively led.
The reverse side of this policy has been the support to the “pro-democracy” MDC parties, the civil society and the “independent” media.
It will be a surprisingly happy day indeed when the US will make good of its claim that it does not support any one party over another in Zimbabwe.
In particular, it will be interesting to see the US reconciling itself with Zanu-PF considering the ideological chasm that exists between the two.
Need it be pointed out that it does not matter whether America is led by George W Bush, Barack Obama or someone that falls from Mars straight into White House?
Yet the meeting between Ambassadors Khaya Moyo and Ray points to the necessity and even desirability of normalising relations between the US and the party that best represents the nationalist goals of Zimbabwe.
Outside of the ephemeral developments like the so-called movement for democratic change embodied in the political parties of a similar name, Zimbabwe has certain constants.
This includes jealously guarding the great natural and human resources of the country.
This is a continuum that stretches from at least the 1890s’ resistance to settler rule right to this date when the country is set to consolidate self-determination through the ownership of resources and economic empowerment of the majority.
Zanu-PF, which by the way has more than a fair share of legitimacy to claim ownership of the gamut of patriotic history of Zimbabwe – along with the heroes that made it – leads Zimbabwe’s continuum of self-determination.
This is one aspect that the US has not been comfortable with and has frantically tried to undo, to the point of regretting that the current crop of its favoured MDC formations has not been able to achieve American ends the same way US pawns elsewhere have done under similar circumstances.
Former American ambassador here Christopher Dell made this lamentation.
Despite the MDC parties, in particular the larger faction led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, saying they are for the future, there is precious little on the ground to suggest that they can outlive their inherent fleetingness.
For instance, it is conceivable that the US could well shunt MDC-T aside one bad day (for PM Tsvangirai and company) when it is sufficiently fed up with these cards that they have been dealt, as Dell would put it.
Does it come as a surprise then that even PM Tsvangirai has admitted that “(President) Mugabe is part of the solution”, much to the mortification of those used to the “Mugabe must go” mantra?
There has been talk of the US through, and with the MDCs engaging “moderates” in Zanu-PF.
In all these scenarios the fundamental aspect is that Zanu-PF is an important component of Zimbabwe’s politics and society at large.
As well, it is evident that the US needs Zimbabwe and Zanu-PF with the reverse being true, which is all the more critical in this globalised world.
The contentious area, though, is the engagement.
The current stand-off that was especially born out of America’s buying into Zimbabwe’s bilateral land issue with Britain – which it typically does where the latter is in trouble – is unsustainable.
This is not only because it is hard to imagine America continuing hypocritically and arrogantly to hold aloof even when it is being exposed for double standards on Zimbabwe and Zanu-PF which have maintained that they do not have a basis for a beef with America.
In fact, it is the US that has found beef with Zimbabwe over some alleged human rights abuses even when it is as clear as day that the US is itself about the worst violator of human rights as Guantanamo, and US’ neo-imperial wars today testify.
The stand-off between Zimbabwe and the US has cost both sides dearly – perhaps more than any side is ready to admit.
But the basis of mending relations between the US and Zanu-PF should be mutual respect.
Zanu-PF doesn’t need to like US foreign policy nor does the US have to like Zanu-PF as a party with its hardliners and all.
The Zimbabwe that Zanu-PF leads is as sovereign a country as the US is.
The US has really no business dictating to Zimbabwe what it should do with its land and diamonds, among other resources, or to use its comparative political, military and economic strength to coerce Zimbabwe to behave in a particular manner.
It would not be quite as pleasant were roles to be changed!
Similarly, the US should not try to champion values of human rights and rule of law on which scores it fares quite badly individually and by proxy, to coerce Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe does not need to be made out of the image of the imperfect US.
Here is also to remind the likes of Ambassador Ray to stop pretending to be as ordinary folk like any other when he is the face of US imperialism just as the civilian-faced USAID, represents the same.
Ambassador Ray has lately been playing ordinary folk.
He was quoted as saying, for example that “…if you read some of the things some of the media have accused me of doing, you wonder if I’m not some re-incarnation of Machiavelli instead of a simple country boy who happens to be the American ambassador here.”
Further, he revealed that with his wife, they had “raised four children and I’m the oldest child in a family with three younger brothers and sisters. I am accustomed to temper tantrums and the way I deal with that is ignore it until they run out of steam.”
Ambassador Ray can’t be as ordinary, and the US indeed is about the incarnation of Machiavelli.
It won’t help matters when there is pretence to the contrary.
Yet in the world where convergence is far better than divergence there is more reason, on Zimbabwe’s part for example, to embrace both Ambassador Ray and the US while the reverse is also true.
But it is all serious business which won’t be helped by a diplomat that goes onto the streets and gives money to newspaper vendors and says he is re-engaging Zimbabwe.
Similarly, granting Ambassador Ray is the ordinary man he chooses to parade himself as, it does not make him as ordinary as the man on the street who suffers sanctions that Ambassador Ray’s US has imposed to make Zimbabwe’s economy scream.
Zanu-PF’s major undoing and crime will be its insistence on Zimbabwe’s sovereignty but it has shown that it can be accommodating even to its sworn enemies.
There has to be a beginning and difficult concessions will have to be made on both sides.