Global village in topsy turvy United States President Donald Trump

Stephen Mpofu, Perspective

A people driven by a propensity for stabbing rather than scratching each other’s back has division and failure rather than unity and triumph as its portion in the global village with any hope of setting foot in a brave new world becoming an ever-receding mirage.

The United States of America and Europe on the one hand and Zimbabwe on the other provide typical examples of tragic ironies that would make a laughing stock for any stranger from out of space.

In the second, tragic irony example provided above most of the 17 political parties that participated in the harmonised elections last year have for the past two decades watched with glee, one might be forgiven for saying, as illegal sanctions imposed by the US and her allies on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean in Europe reduced ours to a Cinderella economy in spite of their own members and families also experiencing the brunt of the economic embargo.

One obvious reason for their indifference to the suffering also affecting their own members must have been in hopes that America’s Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, or ZIDERA would remove Zanu-PF from power as punishment for land reform under which some farms worked by white settlers were repossessed and redistributed to blacks who needed the land the most.

In the event of such a regime change, the political parties in question hoped that they would somehow sneak into power by the back door to enjoy the trappings of political rulership.

Which encouraged the imperialists to virtually ruin our economy believing, as they obviously do, that they are backed by a strong Zimbabwean constituency in their bid to somehow recolonise our country that breezed its way to Uhuru on April 18, 1980 with blazing AK-47 rifles underpinning the armed revolution.

Indeed, as the enemies of our freedom and self-determination desired, our political parties remained virtually at daggers drawn no doubt to the dismay of other African states and particularly those members of the Southern African Development Community of which our own country is part.

It was tragically ironic, in particular when on October 25 the rest of the Sadc countries held different activities marking their solidarity with Zimbabwe against the illegal sanctions, but with our different political parties, apart from the ruling Zanu-PF , keeping their heads buried in the sand instead of rising and uniting against the economic embargo in a country that at independence became known as the breadbasket of Southern Africa with some of its surplus food going north through Zambia to as far as Egypt to feed the hungry, for example.

So it must have come as exhilarating news to every economically suffering Zimbabwean the report that the Political Actors Dialogue, or POLAD, was conducting a workshop in Inyanga this week on the ZIDERA and sanctions.

One would hope that whatever the outcome of the workshop the participants will no doubt have their political perspectives changed for them to realise that to continue to stand divided will not only not augur well for our people but will be a spanner thrown in the works of Sadc unity to the detriment of our regional economic and political solidarity as well as to the way forward for African continent unity in the larger global village.

That instead of responding positively to the Sadc call for the removal of the iniquitous sanctions, the US imposed a travel ban on a Zimbabwean government official, demonstrating that it did not give a damn about the many voices in Sadc calling for an end to the sanctions.

The above discourse clearly portrays the global village in which we live as one in which the more powerful nations politically and economically are wont willy-nilly to ride rough-shod over smaller, weaker nations as Gulliver, also a Westerner, thumbed his dirty nose on Lilliputians during his travels through their country.

But even more tragically for our global village is the “we-couldn’t care-less” attitude exhibited by the United States over the interests of other habitants of the global village, over global warming, for example.

That the United States under President Donald Trump says it will withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change demonstrates how that country is driven by a propensity for obdurately trampling down on the survival interests of other global inhabitants.

The US is one of the biggest, if not the largest, producer of greenhouse gases responsible for wearing the ozone layer wafer-thin and making it incapable of shielding earth from dangerous rays of the sun which cause climate and global warming with recurrent droughts and cyclones such as Idai which this year hit Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe leaving in its wake hundreds of lost lives and property, with some missing people still not accounted for both in Mozambique and Zimbabwe not to mention massive rehabilitation and repair works still under way with Zimbabweans in the diaspora and locally having contributed massively to the restoration of things in Chipinge and other parts of Manicaland and other areas in Eastern Zimbabwe.

Unmodified chimneys of US industries continue to spew dangerous gases and President Trump has promised to boost oil, gas and coal industries that also produce dangerous gases that make the world increasingly unsafe for inhabitants as the sun’s rays, unable to bounce back continue to wreck havoc around the globe with the US itself not being permanently insulated against the atrocious weather conditions spawned by global warming.

But one would have expected Big Brother America – Trump to campaign instead for measures that make the global village a safer place to live for all, big and small.

Unfortunately the politics of giantism do not have room for the concerns of smaller nations.

Which makes the global village increasingly unsafe for human habitation.

But be that as it may POLAD members, if driven by any human conscience at all, must of necessity put the interests of our motherland first before self, realising that all political players have an obligation to leave behind a secure future for their children and children’s children among other citizens if they must escape God’s wrath for promoting selfish interests at the expense of generations to come.

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