The Soviet Union is alive… in Africa…

Original Post Date: 2003-12-23  Posted By: Jan

From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 12/23/2003 5:15:48 AM
The Soviet Union is alive… in Africa…

[Note. This article comes from Nigeria. What makes it even more fascinating is that it is written by a communist. His comments in this article, not only on Zimbabwe, but also on Joe Slovo (the white communist who was the main driving force behind the ANC in South Africa), are most interesting. The entire article has a number of good observations one rarely finds. This article, written by someone who was deeply involved in communism is insightful. Jan]

By: Dr Tajudeen Abdulraheem

The decision by President Mugabe to withdraw from the Commonwealth in retaliation at the recent Commonwealth Heads of State Meeting (CHOGM) decision not to readmit Zimbabwe into the organization was largely expected given the brinkmanship game between Zimbabwe and the Commonwealth for the past two years. President Mugabe had no choice but to carry through his threat to leave the organisation, which he made on the eve of the summit. His own personal pride, political credibility has been fuelling this crisis rather than the much-vaunted anti-imperialist rhetoric that he uses to camouflage his failure as a leader.

Although judging by the enthusiastic support he enjoys across Africa and in the diaspora Mugabe is supposed to be ‘the true African patriot’, ‘courageous leader’ who is willing to stand up to imperialism. How I wish this was true! The sad thing is that most of those trumpeting this propaganda outside may never have visited Zimbabwe before and may not wish to stay there for a day now that the third Chimurenga is fully on. It’s a sad replay of the kind of support the old Soviet Union used to enjoy among comrades and revolutionaries during the cold war.

From being socialists we became Soviet apologists. And after the Sino-Soviet splits, those who supported Moscow spent more time chasing after the ‘revisionist’ Peking supporters than they spent on waging war against the ‘class enemies’ of the imperialist camp. So committed were we to socialism, and so desperate we became in trying to convince ourselves that everything was OK and there was no trouble in our socialist utopia, that we could not see any trouble in our paradise. Even when comrades who had lived there began to make subdued criticisms we dismissed their ‘petty bourgeois’ concerns and in many worse cases, suspected them of being sell-outs and agents of the west.

The farther away from Moscow, Peking, Belgrade and other centres of the ‘Internationalist proletarian struggles’ the more ideologically convinced, pure and dogmatic many became. It used to be said then that the best way of making someone a capitalist is to send them to the Soviet Bloc to study and vice versa too. The most grotesque demonstration of the blatant refusal to see what was happening behind our Socialist fences was the Late Joe Slovo (former commander of ANC’s MK and Leader of the Communist Party of South Africa) who, after the collapse of Soviet Union and many of the atrocities became public knowledge, offered a pathetic defence that he and other comrades did not know. They refused to know or pretended not to know or were prepared to justify the atrocities in the blind faith that it was ‘necessary for the struggle’. In the name of struggle and solidarity people became apologists for whatever was happening in the Soviet bloc. The same is happening today about Zimbabwe in the blinkered response to the tragedy that has been unfolding in a country that was once one of the finest examples of a post-revolutionary government, making steady progress and at one with its people. In ten years Zimbabwe gained even the grudging acceptance of its former enemies.

But in the last few years the country has somersaulted to become yet another Afro pessimist’s choice of why there can be no good news from Africa. It is not imperialist propaganda to say things are very bad in Zimbabwe today not just for the ordinary citizens. Even the previously confident and growing middle class has been crippled, reduced to pittances living in neighbouring countries or forced to go into exile in the imperialist countries they jubilantly left in droves in the early 80s to go back home to help build the nation. We cannot blame all this on imperialism. If imperialism and the conspiracy of Britain is responsible, what we are saying is that Mugabe and his party Zanu PF have been British agents all along and now that their British masters are no longer friendly to them there is problem. This cannot be a convincing argument, but an apology and escapism to see all the fault in others rather than oneself.

Nowhere is the debate about Zimbabwe more emotive than among activists in the African diaspora. Like former leaders of communist parties in eastern Europe the leaders of some of these groups form solidarity movements to support Mugabe and are rewarded by all-expenses paid official solidarity trips to Zimbabwe. Like autopilots they return to say things are OK in spite of all the propaganda from the west. They do not have contact with and refuse to have anything to do with the real victims of Mugabe’s misrule. And yet give themselves the right to lecture everybody else about Zimbabwe and brand as traitors anybody who does not buy their skewed views. Their ignorance is only matched by the arrogance of their posturing politics.

One of the highlights of the CHOGM meeting for me, outside of the intrigues and deals and counter deals in the leaders’ meeting, was a meeting sponsored by the CIVICUS, an NGO focused on democratic empowerment of the peoples of the world as part of the People’s Forum at the Summit. It was specifically themed around the experiences of the Zimbabwe media. Real human beings sharing their experience with other journalists and civil society activists from across the Commonwealth. They were predominantly black Zimbabweans; some of them disillusioned Zanu PF supporters, others who were sympathetic to the opposition MDC, and others who do not have time for its chameleonic politics. The majority of them are not even partisan at all, they just would like to practice their journalism. There also those who just want to remain activists whatever the colour and orientation of the government of the day.

In spite of this diversity they were all united in describing in details the active obstacles put in their way by the government of Zimbabwe. Many of them came from inside Zimbabwe and were fearful for their fate when they return and returning they were. They did not have any desire to use their peoples’ suffering to get asylum or escape the country. They were on a mission to tell ordinary people like themselves in other countries of the Commonwealth and particularly fellow Africans, that Mugabe’s Jonathan Moyo’s anti imperialist rhetoric are what Nigerians call ‘419’ (advance fraud offence that is now truly global after others joined in) that this been most successful in preventing Africans to look beyond race and land in understanding tyranny in Zimbabwe.

Mugabe complains about the negative image for him and his government in the western media. Neither him nor his Goebbels Jonathan Moyo (a former Professor and former Ford Foundation staffer who in his days was supportive of pro democracy, good governance and other activists who are now endangered in Zimbabwe by his government!) complain about the bias of the African and diaspora media and activists in their favour. The Zimbabweans at the meeting were mostly ordinary black Zimbabwean, victims of their power who do not have many listeners among us. Does Mugabe equal Zimbabwe? Is Zanu PF the only voice of Zimbabwe in perpetuity? Don’t ordinary Zimbabweans deserve our solidarity? These questions kept popping up in my mind as I listened to the accounts of these brave soldiers of freedom of expression.

It also made me recollect what the Archbishop of Bulawayo said in a recent reflective discussion with Michael Buerk of the BBC. Speaking about his earlier influences he recalled a white priest who was his teacher who later became active against Ian Smith. One day the muzungu priest told the future bishop that he was going to replace him and fight against a black leader the way he was fighting a fellow white ruler who was racist and unjust. The future bishop did not believe the two things implied by that statement. One, that he was going to become a bishop and two, there was going to rise after Smith a black leader who can be oppressive that he would have to confront him. Prophetically or sadly, both are now true.

Source:Weekly Trust (Nigeria)
published:Mon 22-Dec-2003
URL: http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID…br>

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