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In the case of Ghana, the big lie told to the world was that Ghana needed to be rescued from “economic chaos”.

Various other lies were hinged to this central lie.
The country was said to be hopelessly in debt and the people on the verge of starvation.
“Among the lies aimed against me personally was the one that I had accumulated a large private fortune; this was to form the basis for an all-out character assassination attempt.
“But these lies were subsidiary to the one big lie of ‘economic mismanagement’, which was to provide an umbrella excuse for the seizure of power by neo-colonialist inspired traitors.

The day the coup took place
Words of Robert Mugabe? Wrong.
Words of Kwame Nkrumah slightly over a year after he is deposed from power in a Western-instigated coup on February 24, 1966.
President Nkrumah was on his way to Hanoi, Vietnam, when the coup took place.
President Ho Chi Minh had invited him and Nkrumah carried with him proposals for ending the war in that country which had been invaded by the United States in the name of stopping the spread of communism.

At the time of the coup, Nkrumah had reached Peking (now Beijing) and the burden of breaking the news to him fell on the Chinese Ambassador to Accra who had run ahead of him by way of preparations.
Nkrumah recreates that tense encounter in a book he would publish a few months later, while in Guinea-Conakry; a book simply titled “Dark Days in Ghana”.
Said the Chinese Ambassador: “Mr President, I have bad news. There has been a coup d’etat in Ghana.”
Replied the Osagyefo: “What did you say?”

Came back the ambassador: “A coup d’etat in Ghana.”

Shot back the pan-Africanist: “Impossible!”
A little later, came back the embattled president: “But yes, it is possible. These things do happen. They are in the nature of the revolutionary struggle.”

I will return soon . . .
A while later, Nkrumah would release a more considered statement to the Press and it read: “On my arrival in Peking, my attention has been drawn to reports from Press agencies which allege that some members of the Ghana armed forces supported by some members of the police have attempted to overthrow my government — the government of the Convention People’s Party.

“I know that the Ghanaian people are always loyal to me, the party and the government, and all I expect of everyone at this hour of trial is to remain calm, but firm in determination and resistance.
“Officers and men in the Ghana Armed Forces who are involved in this attempt, are ordered to return to their barracks and wait for my return.

“I am the constitutional head of the Republic of Ghana, and the supreme commander of the armed forces.
“I am returning to Ghana soon.”

When Umuofia will not go to war
He never returned to Ghana, at least in this life, right up to the end of his buffeted life.

The closest he got to his homeland was to some place called Conakry, in a country called Guinea, some 300km from Ghana.
Guinea was under President Sekou Toure, himself a firebrand pan-Africanist who believed in African liberation and continental unity as a principal weapon against imperialism.

Toure had been among the first African presidents to commiserate with Nkrumah.
He did more.

He invited Nkrumah to Guinea, pending the resolution of the political imbroglio imperialism had spawned for Ghana.
This was a euphemism for exile, but Nkrumah accepted the offer.
His calculation was to be near enough his homeland so he would be able to inspire resistance against the coup within Ghana itself.

Indeed, Toure gave Nkrumah many platforms, including access to radio so Nkrumah could make weekly broadcasts through which to inspire nationwide resistance to the coup.
Broadcasts were made to Ghana from Guinean soil.
But Ghana would not rise against the coup which grew more confident with each day it survived unchallenged.

Like Achebe’s Okonkwo, Nkrumah then knew “Umuofia” would not go to war.

In enemy hands
It would take many, many decades, decades well into the 21st century for Nkrumah to walk back home, back to the warmth of his people.

This was by way of a huge commemoration marking the life of Nkrumah under two years ago, a commemoration orchestrated by John Kufour, then President of Ghana, back then a deputy minister of Foreign Affairs under Kwame.

Alongside many other Ghanaian officials serving under Nkrumah, a good many of them brewed in the British colonial civil service pot — or single-mindedly materialistic — Kufour had quickly identified with the other Ghana to emerge from the coup.

More than 35 years later, he would re-emerge in Ghanaian politics as that country’s president, and as “near” history is beginning to reveal, with a little bit of assistance from a representative of Her Majesty’s Government, one Craig Murray, then accredited to Ghana as a British diplomat (see last week and this week’s issues of The Sunday Mail).

More fundamentally, Kufour was to re-emerge as the man to build the plinth or pedestal which Nkrumah deserved, will forever deserve.
I hope Tendai Biti is following this debate so he can properly situate his so-called generational politics.
But that is a matter for another day.

My focus is on the role of lies and character assassination in contriving imperialism-serving regime change.

The cusp of opulence
Not far back, President Mugabe made the mistake of indicating that Zimbabwe will be going back to the polls soon.
What ordinarily would pass for a banal message, more banal even to a country and political ethos with such a surfeit of “democrats” claiming to fight for “change”, has turned out more chilling than the tundra.

The “movement” for our British-born democrats does not seem to relish elections at all.
What has not been coming through is whether they do not want elections this time, or at all.
DPM Mutambara, as usual evincing ungainly candour, gave us a glimpse of their psyche.

Did we think Chamisa or Biti are about to trade their cosseted lives as ministers of Government for an uncertain one sure to come with the turbulence of elections?
The “bhenzi”, the security aides, the power, the glory, and all else?
All to obey the tyranny of time whose irresponsible ticking makes the two years for which the GPA was meant to live and last, come sooner?

Is the GPA cast in stone?
Is time better than the Sabbath which was meant for men (not women)?

What’s in time? Who hath it?
The bitter benzi . . .

I liked the reaction from Mister Chamisa, mukuwasha!
Face surly and writhing from the agony of unwanted ministerial opulence, the political youngster shot back at the DPM, his senior in Government, his rivalled equal in politics: Did the robotics professor whose sun is sure to set in the next election think we enjoy being in Government, enjoy riding in bhenzis, enjoy the titles, the power, the privileges, the people we govern?

Did he? Does he think we fear elections? Does he?
Never before in history was power so disavowed, with such cumulative rhetorical intensity, delivered from such an untwisted, lie-fearing mouth as poured forth these blest words on that day!
It was a divine bleat from one so young and thus so innocent.

“Regai vavuye kwandiri nokuti vushe bwokudenga ndohwavakadai,” akadaro Tenzi achibwereketa paChikaranga!

Splitting the party
And yet, someone from within the belly of “the movement” was bitterly complaining, bellicose even.
I shall protect his name but publicly record his sentiments: “Some of us did not want this thing, chiInclusive Government and Tsvangirai forced us into it.

“Reluctantly we got in and with some of us once we were in, it was heart and soul.
“Now he tells us we have to get out. No, that could cause a crisis, a real split.”

What does Tsvangirai himself say? Nothing much different.

He likes it in the inclusive Government and has said so. What is worse, he rues the silly bluff he made, which President Mugabe has now called, much to his consternation.
“It was only play, dear colleague principal.”
He has tried to get Mutambara to mediate but his officials fear Mutambara will run with the mediation uphill and, once on top of the knoll, tell the village who dunnit!

Not an idle worry, if you ask me, but perhaps relatively minor, lighter, compared to what Tsvangirai wants stopped.

Bed of thorns
He made his bed — chose to make one from twigs of mubayamhondoro, not from the abundant soft green of verdant pastures — he must now lie on it.
And time is not on his side as Zanu-PF’s labyrinthine structures begin to crank themselves into irreversible motion.
Tsvangirai is both terrified and frustrated and in that state, he betrays valuable clues which I hope someone is correctly reading.

He fulminates that the life of GPA does not rest with the goodwill of Mugabe; it has to be negotiated.
Which is to say, Mr Prime Minister? Does he want a longer GPA?
Is that not the same point Mutambara made to mordant lampooning from the Prime Minister’s men?

Who is he threatening by that statement: the President, himself or elections?
Does he intent to negotiate? With who? For what outcome(s)?
Surely, he cannot negotiate to have elections, which is what Mugabe wants?

He can only negotiate for their deferment, which is what he needs, without appearing to want it!

Without a “T”, or with a “TB”

What explains this tergiversation on the part of the MDC-T leader?
Fundamentally, much rests with the state of the MDC-T itself. It no longer wants its “T”.
Or if it has to suffer the “T”, it wants a “B” added, to become MDC-TB.

I hope you figure out that one, dear reader.
Suffice to say the Prime Minister’s party is badly divided, with a fracture likely to tear it apart.
Ordinarily, the threat of a poll would have united it.

Not this time, for all the efforts its owners (Europeans and Americans) are deploying.
The daunting prospects of looming elections, far from uniting MDC-T, has created another fissure for sniping at the leadership which comes across as un-strategic, out of touch and unable to match the “wiles” of Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF.

What is worse, the leadership is being divisive and inattentive to the larger picture, particularly defining issues around which to mount a credible election campaign.
Interestingly, the push for a leadership change in this movement — ironically for change — is being justified not around defining a new, electable agenda
for the formation; rather it is being justified by the need to give the party a leader able to match Robert Mugabe.

Neither a lawyer nor with common sense
And the Prime Minister does not help his case by making self-deprecatory remarks about his lack of grasp of legal issues which he thinks is outweighed by his firm grasp of common sense.
You do not make such remarks to an already sceptical audience which could very well retort: “Even that common sense, you lack too, Mr Leader.”

Besides, how do you confirm you lack legal skills without defeating your case for leadership, indeed without recommending those who have it, should they decide to challenge you?
I mean what common sense are you exhibiting when you tell people in Mabvuku that they are a lot better now, that they are no longer hungry as before?
Who in Mabvuku is better now?

What magic wand has the inclusive Government waved to end the depredations of sanctions?
What reaction are you courting from such an acutely socially burdened populace?

The day Mwonzora wept
As MDC-T leaders were busy enduring the opulence of Government posts, the structures were either enervating or tearing apart from leadership-induced schisms.
Indeed Tsvangirai was told this in Highfield.

A good indicator is the result of Tsvangirai’s Herculean efforts at rousing his supporters for a rescheduled Copac.
He “bunked” Cabinet a few times in the past weeks, adulterated occasions meant to be governmental which he turned into party events, and yet was still unable to mobilise his supporters for a thunderous turnout at urban Copac meetings.
For a while Mangwana and Mwonzora shared a ride on the same car, until the bleak reality on the ground dominated by Zanu-PF became too much for Mwonzora who requested to retreat to his own car.
He wept.

As did Zanu (PF) in 2008 . . .
Clearly, the ground has shifted and it could not be more inauspicious for MDC-T.
What I find astounding are the candid confessions from MDC-T high-ranking officials, even in the presence of rival Zanu-PF members.

They openly say that things are not well at all in their home; that division in their party is worse than anything Zanu-PF can ever visualise.
It is the talk one got from a riven Zanu-PF in the run-up to the March 2008 elections, a talk which the once bitten Zanu-PF shyly twice avoids.

Worried by chiefs?
Another layer of meaning.
Why would a party confident of commanding the polls panic at the view that chiefs would want the President to govern for life?

Does this matter to a party sure to win elections? Surely, the chiefs’ wish can inanely remain, confounded and shattered by the electoral result?
Then you have the frenzy in MDC-T’s “NGO” sector.

Apart from going all the way to South Africa to convince Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa, that Zimbabwe is not yet ready for elections, these FGOs (foreign governmental organisations), retreat to the plush Leopard Rock, all in the name of the poor, eat, eat and eat until all their bodily openings ache, at the end of which they release a lengthy statement whose contents are so familiar, so outworn, and so banal, to have deserved let alone justified the eating and sexing outing in the first place.

They talk about polarisation, Posa, Aippa, human rights, ZEC, police, the President, etc, etc and do so the way they have spoken about the same before.

From Vumba with love
There was real news though.
At the end of the mighty “Vumba Declaration”, all signed and hey, 55 signatories, all but one representing NGOs spawned on our holy soil by verminous Europe and America.
I particularly like the naming tradition in this highly mutable sector.

One signing NGO is called “Achieve Your Goal Trust!” It is that simple: just add “Trust” at the end of a sentence — any sentence — and donor monies come pouring!
Another one, SAYWHAT. Real naming genius. You can have SAYWHAT, SAYWHERE, SAYWHEN, SAYHOW, SAYWHICH, SAYWHENCE, SAYFORTH, each forming into a teat oozing for your cormorant belly!
This earth my brother?

Fifty-five, all told, meaning we have to brace ourselves for at least 55 electoral judgments, before we bring in those of foreign observers!
Which takes me to my main point.

Another round of researched lies

As I write, the World Bank is in the county and its message is that Zimbabwe has slipped to 157th position in its latest Doing Business Report.
IMF, the World Bank’s sibling, is also in the country and has also given a damning report on Zimbabwe.

Not to be outdone, one Samson Muradzikwa of Development Bank of Southern Africa tells us foreign investors are shying away from Zimbabwe because they “do not view the inclusive Government as a genuine power-sharing arrangement”.
And a picture of PM Tsvangirai is pasted on the story presumably to show who is not genuine or who does not have power!

In the same vein and in the same week, you have a UN agency called UNDP telling us “Zimbabwe is the worst place to live in”, presumably concluding this is why it must be invaded or treated under Chapter 7!
Expectedly, Minister Misihairabwi-Mushonga is furious and thinks we do not need UNDP research, let alone endorsement.
And just watch, more such damning reports will come, hard on the heels of one another.

The Ray lecture
But you also have stunning output from the American Ambassador and his paranoid embassy, itself an uncharacteristic fortress in a country so peaceful, a country whose only threat comes from the West, including, ironically enough, the fortified United States of America.

Ambassador Charles Ray on Tuesday, November 2 gave a “public lecture” at Chinhoyi University of Technology, just a matter of a couple of kilometers from the scene of the seminal Chinhoyi Battle of 1966 which heralded the start of our armed liberation struggle against Rhodesian fascists, supported by the chrome-craving US government which Charles Ray serves today.

It helps to recall that the United Nations passed comprehensive sanctions against Rhodesia soon after the declaration of unilateral independence by the racists.
America refused to observe those sanctions, citing its defence needs by way of the strategic chrome mineral which it had to import from Rhodesia, or else from the Soviet Union, its bete noire.

The domestic and defence needs of the United States prevailed over the collective interests of more than seven million Africans of Rhodesia, then occupied, oppressed and discriminated against.

Let us see if America’s man here did better at Chinhoyi than he did recently at Heroes Acre, another important shrine.

240 years without him
His lecture was one elaborate flaunt of America’s electoral practices which he regards as too old and entrenched to be transplanted to other climes.

I grant him that, wondering though why a biological representative of a long oppressed race inside America itself, could possibly have glossed over the fact the government he represents here politically denied a vote to his kinsmen for the greater part of the 240 years of that democracy he so eloquently panegyrises.
Surely a genuine African Texan (if that makes sense at all) must know that?

Surely an African-American who is a sharer in that troubled history must say something about that.
Does not the experiences of his race, bitter experiences at that, require a more modest sales effort of American democracy, more so if the salesman of that democracy carries the injuries and scars of its failings?

Or is this the compulsion of duty?
If it is, what then does that duty make him, especially so to us Africans in whose midst he now lives?

Confused by “sadza” away from home
On a lighter note, he drew an analogy of “sadza” which he claims is better enjoyed at home than away!

I hope he knows sadza and how it sits on the tongues of those that eat it.
Much worse I hope he understands its eaters: you and me.

You invoke a local troupe, better make sure it’s apt, Mr Ambassador!
He thinks Zimbabwe’s democracy has strong roots but wilted foliage, blaming it all on its Government which cannot listen to its people.

“The problem, of course, is that Zimbabwe’s Government seems to have lost the habit of listening to people – all of Zimbabwe’s people,” he claimed.

His second major point: sanctions are “a fairy tale” of the un-listening Zimbabwe Government.
“I understand many of you are studying to be engineers. Perhaps one of you will be clever enough to invent a machine that will allow us to visit the imaginary place where all this (sanctions by the US) happened,” he challenged, obviously dramatising sure-footedness.

A sentence after that declaration, the ambassador said: “The truth of course, is that the United States blocks business transactions and visas for a little over 100 Zimbabwean leaders who have supported or participated in political violence against their fellow citizens.

“When leaders named on the US sanctions list (hee-e?) tell you that these limited and largely symbolic measures destroyed Zimbabwe’s economy, what they are really doing is pretending they are not responsible for a disastrous decade.

“They are saying, ‘I am not the one. I am not responsible!’”

Then he makes his last point, one adjunctive to the allegation of an un-listening Government.

Claiming that many Zimbabweans are working hard to get their Government to listen, he stresses: “This is vitally important work, and I think you will agree with me that this work must succeed before Zimbabwe has its next election.
For what is an election if not an opportunity for the Government to listen?”
The American envoy has, in other words, pronounced US position on proposed elections in Zimbabwe, following a referendum and its constitutional aftermath, which can only be known soon after.

A lady called Hudson-Dean
The same day, US Embassy’s Sharon Hudson-Dean was issuing a statement no clearer than that of the ambassador.
“The US does not maintain sanctions against the people of Zimbabwe or the country of Zimbabwe.

“US sanctions target individuals and entities that have undermined democratic processes or institutions in Zimbabwe.”
Clearly the persons and entities targeted by US sanctions – which do not exist by the way – are not part of “the people of Zimbabwe”!
She goes further in that muddled fashion: “US sanctions – (which do not exist by the way!) – also targets entities owned or controlled by the Zimbabwean Government or officials of the Government.”

Please note, gentle reader, that entities belonging to the Government of Zimbabwe have nothing to do with the people of Zimbabwe, according to American diplomatiquespeak!

A little further down, the diplomat’s pen simply disintegrates: “The US Treasury updates targeted sanctions related to Zimbabwe by adding individuals or entities to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List as new individuals or companies emerge, or are identified, who meet the criteria for designation, and by removing individuals or entities from the list when they no longer meet the criteria for designation.”

I shall not comment except to say that this very active sanctions policy takes too long to realise that the dead cannot live in permanent sin way past their capacity to act and react in this life where America is such a willful superpower!

She migrates to US and IFIs: “US is not preventing Zimbabwe’s access to international financial assistance.

“The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, signed into law in 2001 (she says so with absolutely no sense of awkwardness), and provisions contained in subsequent appropriations acts, restrict the ability of the US to vote in support of new assistance to Zimbabwe from international financial institutions (IFIs), except for programmes that meet basic human needs or promote democracy.

“Zimbabwe was already ineligible for multilateral loans before this law was passed due to its arrears to the international financial institutions.”
She goes on and on, her argument thinning to the threadbare with each comma.

Zero interference
Even more interesting is the fact that the American Ambassador is so anxious that his government’s “message” on sanctions hits home unimpeded, that he responded robustly yesterday to the way The Herald reported his lecture, a report whose “tenor and opening” he did not like.

The US had no policy of interfering in Zimbabwe whose fate belongs to its people!
And creating a whole law for a sovereign country so far away from American subcontinent, with a view to ensuring that policies of that sovereign country stop posing “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States”, is not interfering!

No, it’s not!
Let me swiftly retire the ambassador and his poorly-trained communication minion by making one or two poignant points, based on American activities.

And those bills?
Do the Ambassador and his minions know of a Bill (S.3297.IS) titled “Zimbabwe Transition to Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2010”, piloted by the same men who pushed through ZDERA, people like Feingold?

Do the Ambassador and his staff know of another bill (S.3722.IS) titled “Zimbabwe Sanctions Repeal Act of 2010” drafted by senior members of the US legislature, in fact the same persons responsible for ZDERA, to try and attenuate sanctions against Zimbabwe?

That particular draft talks about “imposing sanctions on the Mugabe regime and members of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front,” openly admitting that “the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 (is) burdening the power-sharing Government in Zimbabwe (and thus) must be repealed.”

Of course both bills came to grief as the ambassador himself predicted, although without making us aware at the time that he himself would be part of the lobby against their success.
For how else is one to read the communication from his mission quoted above?

But that is not my point.

My point is if the American Ambassador and his staff regard their Congressmen responsible for these two initiatives to remove sanctions as employees of the Zimbabwe Government with an interest in widening the sanctions “fairy tale”.

Reading Zimbabwe’s ledger?

I go a little further.

Does the Ambassador know that Zimbabwe, with its comparatively small foreign debt did not stop being creditworthy on account of its asset base and therefore its ability to pay, indeed that the assessment had absolutely nothing to do with its ledger?

The year 1999, which is when Zimbabwe was declared ineligible for loans from IFIs, came hard on the heels (as it should numerically) of the 1998 Donor Conference which heralded the collapse of multilateral intervention in her land reform project, but also of her operations in the Congo in defence of a legitimate government which had been threatened by an American-inspired invasion by Rwanda and Uganda.

Does the ambassador know that this defence of the Congo against an American willed invasion, plus the land reform programme and the property relations it implied in fact are what his government cites as “the unusual and extraordinary threat” to its policy on the subcontinent?

Indeed that these two considerations proved stronger that Zimbabwe’s ledger, in determining her creditworthiness?

More indebted countries with smaller economies and less natural resources got bigger loans and relief from the same IFIs than little Zimbabwe which dared stop a second Lumumba from falling, much as they could not, unfortunately, save him from dying.

Tough strictures

Besides, granting that Zimbabwe could no longer draw resources from IFIs, for whatever reason one pleases to advance, does America’s Harare mission read carefully the wording of ZDERA on the matter?

It reads: “Until the President makes the certification described in Sub-Section (d), and except as may be required to meet basic human needs or for good governance, the Secretary of the Treasury shall instruct the United States executive director to each international financial institution to oppose and vote against: (1) any extension by the respective institutions of any loan, credit, or guarantee to the Government of Zimbabwe; or (2) any cancellation or reduction of indebtedness owed by the Government of Zimbabwe to the United States or any international financial institution.”

If Zimbabwe was so heavily indebted – which it was not – Zimbabwe still had an option to negotiate a loan reschedule which is permissible and provided for by the IFIs.

This is what Sub-Section (2) quoted above was crafted to preempt.

Basic human needs according to the UN include life, food, shelter, education, clean water, etc, etc, all those things governments are elected and do borrow to deliver.

What is exactly meant by the US strictures?

And where meeting these basic needs is reposed in NGOs inspired by the same sanctioning governments, that is still not interference?

Above all, why place legal strictures against a Government you are convinced is no longer eligible for loans?

The idea was to close all loopholes in order to ensure Zimbabwe would not get any services arising from its membership of these IFIs.

The earless who built Chinhoyi

My last point on this matter is to wonder whether the US Ambassador knows that Chinhoyi University of Technology was built by the same un-listening Government at the height of US and European sanctions?

For what?

So the American Ambassador could find a platform for telling us we have no US sanctions biting us, only an un-listening Government which destroyed Zimbabwe’s economy in the last decade?

And when Finance Minister Biti, himself a lawyer within the sanctions-seeking MDC with which the US Government collaborated to create ZDERA, tells us sanctions are real and do exist, what do the ambassador and his minions say?

It does provide a glimpse into who shapes Tsvangirai’s mind on this one matter.
But I am happy it is becoming patently difficult for Americans to muster a clever argument in hiding or defending their sanctions here.

Zimbabwe today, Nkrumah’s yesterday
How does all this tie up with the Nkrumah quote I opened with? ZDERA opens with a charge of “economic mismanagement” against the Zimbabwe Government, while the Executive Orders accuse Government of all manner of offences, including causing “economic instability”.

And of course the decade of land reforms was a decade of copious reports laying all sorts of charges against the Zimbabwean authorities, principally that of economic mismanagement and political repression.
With the announcement of possible elections, we are back to the same template, and the victim shall once more be blamed for the disability.
This is what the freshest reports I have quoted above, which can only increase as we move towards elections are aimed at.
Except the situation is slightly more complicated for imperialism than existed in Ghana of the 1960s.

Catch-22!
Thanks to the inclusive Government, any negative report on Zimbabwe damns the inclusive Government.
That means Zanu-PF and both MDC formations.
You cannot condemn the Zimbabwe Government as un-listening without doubting Mugabe and Tsvangirai’s ears alike.
You cannot doubt the power-sharing agreement without damning those you think wield the real power and those pretending to have it.

You cannot condemn Zimbabwe as an investment destination without damning claims that the MDC formations have restored “functionality to Government”, as Chamisa is wont to claim.
Above all, Zimbabwe cannot be the worst place to live without at the same time having the worst Government to rule!
That means the three political parties are not fit to govern.
They are not electable in other words, meaning the electable ones have to come from another planet, possibly one called United States of America!

Icho!