Zimpapers Logo

Isdore Guvamombe
Donald John (DJ) Trump has been described with some of the harshest adjectives by some of his countrymen after an unprecedented takedown at Capitol Hill last week — that exposed America’s real stature — a fragile nation with a security system in slumber and a nation that cannot practice what it preaches.

I use the term “takedown” loosely here and also metaphorically in that DJ Trump, has had a stint in wrestling and there, a takedown is when a wrestler flips an unsuspecting opponent to the mat from a neutral position. It is worth two points. The wrestler might eventually lose the match due to other factors, but he/she will have scored big and made a point to both the enemy and the spectators.

Not that I like DJ Trump, no. Not that I support his action, no. But his actions have given us a rare insight into American statecraft and into how it reacts when faced with problems, which they normally inflict on other nations.

For the avoidance of doubt, Capitol Hill is the seat of the US government, home to the domed United States Capitol, Senate, Houses of Representatives and the neoclassical Supreme Court. It is America itself.

Trump’s supporters successfully pulled a fast one at the Capitol, invading and ransacking chambers, looting sentimental artefacts and relic regalia, making unsuspecting senators almost jump out of their skins with fear. The deed was done, the rest is reaction.

Like a wrestling script, DJ Trump’s supporters took to Capitol Hill, the nerve centre of Americanism, in fact the heart of America itself and caused raptures, when the system was asleep; when the security was relaxed. Before that, it was unthinkable. But the bizarre happened on that fateful afternoon, the centre of power was shaken and world opinion changed. Opinion on America will never be the same.

I doubt anyone who watched the drama at the Capitol, can still say America is that great nation, the harbinger of democracy, peace, human rights, tolerance, good governance and accountability. No! Its network of intelligence was caught off guard.

For years, America has been the proverbial outsider, mourning more than the bereaved in elections, especially in countries like Zimbabwe. They have been brewing storms from tea cups, sponsoring terror through rogue elements in the opposition. Today, the chickens have come home to roost in Capitol Hill.

While what happened there might be important to the American body politic, what is more important to the world is the reaction and the shame it brought to a nation that thought it was too smart.

The same thuggery DJ Trump’s supporters used at the Capitol has been attempted by Nelson Chamisa’s MDC-Alliance in Zimbabwe many times, but the difference is that Zimbabwe’s Statecraft and security sector has been more alert than the Americans.

The irony of it, though, is that each time it was tried in Harare, America was quick to defend the perpetrators. It described the perpetrators as democratic forces, some form of freedom fighters who should be allowed to march to even State House and take down the Government.

We were told it was their democratic right to march to wherever, even when they burnt cars and killed people in Harare. It was still democracy. We were told that the Government of Zimbabwe should not arrest them.

It is fact that the “invasion of the Capitol” resulted in four deaths by gunshots and several injuries by other means of the skirmishes and that was in mighty America? Really?

America is now hunting down its own citizens and calling them terrorists? American terrorists? They are now being called small groups of domestic terrorists!

Today, America has been left with an egg on its face, thanks to DJ Trump. He has shown us that America’s security system is not as alert as it wants the world to think it is; that America panics and called its citizens terrorists. DJ

Trump has exposed that America is intolerant to divergent views and that demonstrations to centres of power should only be sanitised when they happen off the American soil.

Imagine if MDC-Alliance had ransacked Zimbabwe’s Parliament? The reaction of the American Government would have been “it is their democratic right.” So when is democracy, democracy?

But America today has impeached Donald Trump, in a highly hyped process, very high sounding, but signifying mainly nothing. It is a face saver. It is not very important further than being a political tactic to make sure Trump does not come back into mainstream politics and governance. After all Joe Biden will be sworn in a few days.

Most of Trump’s impeachment trial will be done when he is already out of office and when Biden will be the President of America.

We are not too stupid to read much into the impeachment process. It is a face saver coming a little bit too late.

It will simply block DJ Trump from office, but the American image has been damaged.

World thinking has changed. World opinion has changed. America can no longer claim organisational superiority in elections and democratic institutions because the whole world has seen how its own election has been plunged into chaos. It is a sham and shame.

There are fundamentals here. The 2020 US presidential election will go down in the annuls of world history as among the worst, which resulted in chaos and subsequent impeachment of the outgoing president. This is documented history.

The fundamental here is that if we use the US’ reaction to elections in other countries where baseless complaints by losers, like Chamisa in the case of Zimbabwe, have been taken seriously, America did not hold a credible, free and fair election by world standards and this is the reason why one of the candidates DJ Trump is aggrieved.

If the election was free and fair, using the same argument, Trump would not be complaining and reacting this way.

So America has now joined many countries in holding sham elections, using the same scope.

Again, using the same thinking, Biden must hold talks with Trump and establish a Government of National Unity, because the sham election has divided Americans instead of uniting them.

Suffice to say, what all progressive thinking Americans are experiencing today; from the emotional trauma to the shame of belonging to a nation whose election process is rubbished, this is what exactly we have felt for decades when America has rubbished our free and fair elections, simply because their favoured opposition has lost and starts brewing nonsense.