<<<To know where we are going to, we must know where we are coming from>>>>


1)


"The strategy is simple. Put Mbeki and Obasanjo under real pressure to take a stance against Mugabe. Increase the costs, real and moral, of supporting Zimbabwe’s land reform programme. In the meantime, create situations that generate tension between Nigeria and the rest of Sadc on the one hand, and Zimbabwe."

2)

"Nothing new, I hear the reader saying. Well, wait a minute. Correct the fatal weakness of past propaganda efforts which pitched Britain’s case on interests of its scions here. "

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----- Original Message ----- 
From: [log in to unmask] 
To: [log in to unmask] ; [log in to unmask] 
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 12:51 AM
Subject: This Day: A dying colonialism 


This Day: A dying colonialism 



By Nathaniel Manheru 
A few weeks back, I gave my readers a peep into frantic efforts underway to lay British propaganda infrastructure ahead of the December CHOGM in Abuja. 

I reassured my readers (almost with a biblical tone) that this Peta Thornycroft you see disappearing for a while from the local media scene, will come back. A true and determined daughter of the Empire, she had in fact been dispatched to South Africa to help set up and launch the maiden issue of This Day, a new publication which publishes in Nigeria and South Africa, but is dying (not literally) to circulate in Zimbabwe. 

I also made reference to a phony delegation of white farmers who were dispatched to Nigeria to pose as investors in that country’s agricultural sector. I made reference to a recrudescence of "human rights" reports between then and Abuja, starting with the Archbishop Pius Ncube's one on the youth brigade. 

Above all, I warned that there would be more images of "victims of torture", many of them bold enough to unmask their sacred interiors for a greater propaganda good. 

Of course these paraded interiors would be laced, greased and "reddened" to give the world torture’s compound counterfeit. Of course I could not have left out media opportunities gratuitously offered by the main Western media, in order to ratchet up global "coverage" of Zimbabwe, but strictly from the vantage point of white Britons and their injured interests here: impressions of an upswing in farm "occupations", in violence, in deaths, in all that makes a good reading of an equally good country under "baddest" autocracy. As we encroach Abuja, Zimbabwe will be a reality for media superlatives. 

This day, let me go back to Peta and her project. She has successfully done her bit and is set to come back so she can camp on white-owned farms, stage-managing occurrences that are helpful to Britain in Abuja. She will be helped by a sister, again British, notorious for using local boys in more ways than one. Both have to mount a multimedia campaign against Zimbabwe in the run-up to, and during Abuja. Zimbabwe will be a serial documentary on BBC, focus falling sharply on the President. Kariba is far enough from the madding crowd, an ideal locale for planning, co-ordination, and yes, a bit of fun. After all, even hippos mop their brow! 

The strategy is simple. Put Mbeki and Obasanjo under real pressure to take a stance against Mugabe. Increase the costs, real and moral, of supporting Zimbabwe’s land reform programme. In the meantime, create situations that generate tension between Nigeria and the rest of Sadc on the one hand, and Zimbabwe. 

Nothing new, I hear the reader saying. Well, wait a minute. Correct the fatal weakness of past propaganda efforts which pitched Britain’s case on interests of its scions here. 

The new script should foreground Africans, preferably Nigerians and South Africans. This is where the saga involving South Africa’s High Commissioner in Mashonaland West becomes interesting. It had been billed to cause a diplomatic tiff between Zimbabwe and South Africa over Zimbabwe’s pillar policy of land reforms. This did not work. 

Except the bag of tricks is full. We are in the middle of the execution of British version of Muldergate. By title and masthead, This Day is Nigerian. It is an African paper owned by citizens of a country that has backed Zimbabwe’s cause to the hilt. Yet it was conceived, carried and, after a few moons, prematurely delivered by Peta Thornycroft. 

This Day is a birth in menopause and hence its grotesquery. Significantly, the masthead effaces the womb that bore the paper that day. Instead, it is loud about the many suitors of all hue and identities, all the time foregrounding Africans. 

So the editor is Justice Malala, ex-Financial Mail, ex-Sunday Times, ex-America, ex-many things I cannot repeat here. So the managing editor is Gbenga Oni-Olusola, a thoroughbred Nigerian. No doubt. Ignore the Davies, the Sherries, the Rosenbergs, the Hoggs, the Wilsons. Ignore even the Bauers, the Kotze (not from Mashonaland West!). 

Above all, ignore those hate cartoons on Mugabe that resemble Zapiro. After all he holds no patent and what he sketches, the African can sketch too. It is a Nigerian paper, an African paper! Contributing journalists are not just Africans; they are Zimbabweans too! There is Precious Shumba who cannot break news anymore, thanks to the brutal Mugabe regime that kills papers. 

There is Bill Saidi who weeps for the beloved country like a bitter philosopher. There is Mdlongwa who cannot understand why the inscrutable Mugabe sends children to schools at the expense of the economy. Of course there is Go-go-and-let Moyo whose legal perorations reject a descend into the world of real lawyers. It is a Zimbabwe publication and hence its decision to devote acres and acres of space to Zimbabwe. This is the public face. 

The private face is that this is deeply British, an intelligence project meant to defeat Zimbabwe’s land reforms by eroding its worldwide support, by alienating her allies. It is Britain’s way of consigning post-colonial justice kumarara ("malala" in Zulu). That makes the editor the message and consumer beware! 

Justice Malala was the better African of post-1994 South Africa. He was raised on the staple of white conservatism whose ideological apparatus are the Financial Mail and The Sunday Times, both incorporating British interests. The finish was in America, right in the belly of the beast. Justice is no Jose Marti for whom the beast’s harsh subterranean excites a revolutionary rejection. He stayed inside it, quite at peace, until it was time to be vomitted onto savannah to deal with its craggy hills, knotty and kempt shrubs. The idea is for This Day to influence and nudge Nigeria’s mainstream media towards an anti-Mugabe, anti-Zimbabwe line. 

That will give a sense of an Africa that is fed up with Mugabe. The idea is to provoke the authorities into banning the circulation of the paper in Zimbabwe so the conclusion is that no one is safe with this "autocrat". Above all, the idea is to use Africans to batter and de-stool politics, principles and agendas of the liberation struggle in Southern Africa. Significantly part of the paper’s anchor story is headlined "Time running out for liberation war comrades Mbeki and Bob". I hope the authorities will not take the bait. 

But Robertson is my white man. 

Talking about Africans who "apron" whites and their interests, did anyone read a letter from Lovemore Kadenge published by the Financial Gazette? It was a stout defence of John Robertson, the man I tackled some week or so ago. I described (and I still do) his ideas as wrinkled, and The Herald’s sharp picture editor delivered a picture that made his face a natural metaphor of my view of his ideas. This, apparently riled Kadenge who loves more of Robertson. He told me to stick to facts. 

Well I do, and it’s a fact that time registers on Robertson’s face. My duty is not to prettify him; my role is not to slash the crucifix which his ancient ideas linked to an unfortunate era of our history, constructs. That is his problem and maybe that of Kadenge and his society whose service and contribution to this country is still to come. The man has the temerity to tell me that Robertson was no Rhoodie because he edited The Rhodesia Herald in the 1970s. 

Does he know what The Rhodesia Herald was in the 1970s? Why is he being so cruel to Robertson, nailing the man he should be redeeming. This is what happens when people who think they know it all; who think they have solutions for this country dare speak. 

Its clear Kadenge reveres the Rhodesian economic ethos and its doyens should be untouchable. Well, he is in for a rude time and what he loves more shall be unpacked till it shows its "unadorned self". 

Meanwhile, many thanks to him for the helpful revelation which I did not know. Never mind that he rubbed salt where he should have covered by a plaster, to adapt a Shakespearian saying. 

Putting out Bush-fire 

The Iraqi war rages on in spite of the toppling of the Saddam regime and the Americans continue to suffer more casualties now than during the days of the invasion. Since my last installment, Hussein’s "loyalists" have continued to mete out punishment after punishment to George Bush’s boys and lately to the "coalition" forces with such renewed vigour that is defying superior high-tech weaponry that is pitted against them. 

In response, or is it vengeance, the world superpower has turned its WMD on unarmed Iraqis on the pretext that they are harbouring the resistance. Cluster bombs are now being dropped recklessly in residential areas and we are told that this should flush out the resistance. What has happened to the American conscience if ever there was one? 

However, proof of the strength of the resistance is becoming all too obvious with the daring bombings the Iraqis are carrying out with increased precision and devastating results. 

The attack on the Italian military police barracks in the south-eastern city of Nasiriya is the latest case in point. Soon after the attack, George Bush vowed his boys would not be pulled from Iraq but would remain there until the resistance has been crushed, so he said. 

But in the last few days, the US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, has just paid a lightning visit to Washington, presumably to brief Bush about the peace prospects. But statements coming from Capitol Hill do not speak of a ship that is still on a steady course. From out of the blue, there is now talk of real transfer of power to an Iraqi government. 

All along real power transfer was not on the cards after a new constitution had been drafted and elections held. What few truths did Bremer whisper in Bush’s ear? Here I leave you to your imagination. — [log in to unmask] 

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