Zimbabwe The Numerate Nation that cant count

March 22, 2014 Nathaniel Manheru, Opinion & Analysis

The Other Side with Nathaniel Manheru

Matters are hurtling to a head in the MDC-T, are they not? But I must correct myself. I was
rather hard on Biti and Mangoma last week. Or is it Mangoma and Biti? Just who is who? And
what is the hierarchical sequence? I wonder. Last week I suggested the duo is doing nothing on
the ground, nothing to challenge Tsvangirai organisationally. I was wrong. There is lots of
activity going on, activities calculated to challenge Morgan Tsvangirai organisationally, while
tethering him to endless, distracting court battles, themselves the real chink in Tsvangirai’s
knuckle-in-place-of-head armor! There was some activity in Matabeleland North last week, and
possibly in Bulawayo, activity sizeable enough to cause a rumble in Tsvangirai’s insides.

The calculating keeper

A worse rumble in Chamisa who appears to punch on the side of Tsvangirai when in reality he is
clearing ground for his own ambition, a vaulting one if you ask me. Get it from me: Chamisa is
not fighting to keep Tsvangirai. He is fighting to depose him soonest, which is why the likes of
Mangoma and Biti have to be stumped out, all in the name of saving Tsvangirai, “the face of the
struggle”.
Of course not many asked what it is that is behind that much vaunted face of struggle. Let me
favour you with indicative titbits. Of course you have Chamisa whose bid seems pre-empted by
claims that he is eyeing for Biti’s secretary generalship. He denies, correctly too, for his aim is
much higher and, when Biti’s name is mentioned, Macbeth-like, Chamisa quips: “Thane of
Cawdor!/That’s a step/ On which I must stumble, or else overleap,/ For in my way it lies./ Stars,
hide your fires,/ Let not light see my black and deep desires;”
Vacuum or vortex?
It will be a real setback if Chamisa has to vie for secretary generalship, as that would mean he
would have stumbled and “failed to overleap”, failed to neutralise Biti beforehand. This is what
all this bembera around Biti is all about: to rattle him and goad him into punishable excesses, in
order to be rid of him, kangaroo style. But many outside and inside “the tent” have the same
ambition, the same target.

There are many originally associated with this British political project who sense a vacuum,
while incorrectly reading a vortex for an opportunity. Put the likes of Sikhala in that category. He
is not positioning himself close to Tsvangirai in order to take the sacrificial bullet; he is there in
order to be near enough to push Tsvangirai over when the tipping hour arrives.

But you also have Simba Makoni with his naive thinking that joining the MDC-T places him
close enough for a similar takeover, without the burden of history, of ‘99. Interestingly that
threatening prospect of a Makoni’s ahistorical rise in the run-up to July 31 united the likes of
Chamisa, Biti, Mudzuri and Mangoma against Tsvangirai who was suspiciously viewed as
seeking an unofficial handover to a non-member. And donors liked the idea too, which is what
made it so menacingly real to other MDC-T’s aspirants, across factions.

I hope this clarifies why Makoni, all along a Presidential candidate, chose to run for a mere
provincial constituency in Manicaland, in the process earning himself the political jab of a
proverbial god aspiring to be mere man. And failing in that lowly ambition too! The bigger idea
was to get his butt in, in the hope of a tackling elbow.

Shattered shirtfront
And then you have your Mudzuri. A very brave man indeed, but he made a big mistake of
showing that bravery too early. Made a big mistake not against himself but for his rivals in the
MDC-T, and these are Biti and Mangoma. He was misread as about to announce a pre-emptive
power-bid, well ahead of the maturation of the Biti-Mangoma leadership-change strategy.

That triggered panic, precipitating a premature declaration of intent by way of Mangoma’s fatal
advisory, the writing of which triggered consequences so dramatically represented by his
shattered shirtfront. I am not so sure whether Mudzuri has been pre-empted, or spared to fight
another day. He has this habit of being absent when you want to read him. Initially I thought it
was a strategy, until I got convinced that far from being an actor, he merely exacerbates actions
of others. Between his dropping from Government and from organising secretaryship, he could
have done many things. He didn’t.
Aura of calculated mystery
As for Tsvangirai, well, Harare, Masvingo, Matabeleland North, Bulawayo, Manicaland and of
course Mashonaland East remain fundamentally unsettling propositions. This is why Chamisa is
battling to seal suspension or cause preordained restructuring in those same provinces, a move
which Biti hopes to abort through a reading of the party’s statutes.

And the threats to charge any MDC-T MP who does not attend “the president’s” rallies does not
suggest a winning team. The Biti faction’s decision to speak to the world through Mafume,
Mangoma’s lawyer, is not only a way of building some aura of mystery and inscrutability over
their real thoughts and intentions; it is a presentiment of a legal accent in leadership battles
ahead.

And the upshot? Well, a clear indication that the hive of activity around MDC-T is analogous to
brisk movements ahead of a clearance rummage sale: many throng the business site not to show
its market pull, but to pick bits and pieces. See you in November!

When the hyena hires a lawyer for the lamb

The other day I had a discussion with a western diplomat who shall remain nameless. We
discussed lots of things, including the Chinese role on the continent, and the continent’s
readiness for a new, entrepreneurial China with its gargantuan appetite for raw materials so
abundant on the continent. Smugly, she lamented Africa’s lack of capacity to do deals on the
economy and resources.
Pretending to be polite to me, she added that Zimbabwe is in a much better position, what with
its educated populace. “You know what, a few years back one of our leading energy companies
engaged an African country for the exploitation of huge offshore gas deposits. The company
would not make progress, much to our frustration as a mission. And what arrested progress was
not tough bargaining on the part of the African owners of the resource. It was stonewalling based
on raw ignorance.

They really did not know what to defend, what to wring out of the deal. They chose the safety of
stonewalling. We really were frustrated, I tell you! And hey, you know what we ended up
doing?” Of course I did not. “We got a very good lawyer from my country for the energy firm,
and another good lawyer, again from my country, to help the African country!” We had a laugh,
a good, hearty one for her, a tragic one for me.

For this was an African country, African intellect, an African resource, African ownership,
African fate and African destiny, all of it shaped by this western country, from both sides of
demand and supply. Not even the-Zimbabwe-are-much-better pamper would mollify me. It was
depressing to hear this pontificated sympathy, in reality this brag of power. And are we better,
any better, I was left wondering.
But the books are in
Chinese, Sir?
Another anecdote is appropriate, one nearer the bone. Not too long ago, I had a discussion with
Minister Walter Chidhakwa, the young Minister of Mines. He gave me a dolorous tale on the
goings-on in the mining sector, in its diamond sub-sector specifically. Recently he went on a tour
of the diamond fields, a fact-finding tour.

He visited the first diamond company, the second, the third, all the time getting some coherent
story, however suspicious. When it came to the fourth mine — a joint venture with the Chinese
— he met the chief there: a man wearing my complexion, wielding a surname that is decidedly
Zimbabwean. “So, what is happening here”, asked the Minister, tall ears ready. “A hmm, a
hmmm I don’t know, Cde Minister.”

“But you are our representative in the joint venture?” “Ahmmm, yes Minister, but the Chinese
brought in their own people.” “Yes, they were minding their own interests, you were minding
ours?” “Yes Sir, but all the papers on the mining activity are in Chinese”, added the Blackman,
penitentially. Another laughter, but this time pregnant with nervousness, so full of shame and a
shared sense of national mortification, national tragedy. That’s sample us.

Sleeping to fruity bubble

We have a problem, a big one too. We sought the political kingdom. Sought and got tools for
securing that political kingdom. It was a good fight, a very good fight which cut us above much
of Africa, cut us above as an heroic people. We died. We killed; we suffered setbacks, we won,
in the end, securing the political kingdom ever so firmly.

We are happy, have been from 1980. But soon after, we slid into a deep slumber, enjoyed the
deep sleep of an accomplished people, an achieving nation. In that sweet sleep, the outsider
tiptoed in, armed with a sweet ditty with which to serenade us into uxoriousness, a lullaby that
got us to sleep from one market day to another, to another and to yet another. In West Africa I
am told, sleep that goes beyond one market day becomes something else.

We are still asleep, at the very least drowsy and recumbent, thanks to the outsider’s soporific
song, gentle stroke and pat. It is sweet sleep, the kind that loosens all the bolts, hind ones
included. Kusunungura mbambo dzese zvadzo, leaving us in fruity bubble, the type that adds
smelly warmth to the sleep.

Forbears who forearmed us

Goodness me, the warrior people, the warrior nation defeated by mere sleep. A warrior people
who can’t catch, can’t eat, can’t own, can’t trade to advantage! We have a saying in Shona:
chidyamatovo wakadzipwa neganda remhuru. Roughly translated: the legendary eater of raw,
hard hides, choked on a piece of veal. You want another, just to show you that dutifully, our
forebears have been our fore-armers? Garoziva kuroya wakahukurwa nembwa.

Again roughly translated: on that fateful day, the master-witch drew an alerting bark from a
sleepy puppy. She was caught red-handed, and a dry nail was driven right down her fontanelle.
Today she walks with a limp, and no one dares disclose the cause of it. Such things are never
repeated in the village. The rains will not fall.

Why are so heroic a people so ill-equipped for the economic battle they knew was fated to follow
the political war? The battle they knew was the only way to make real the political kingdom just
won, just so dearly won with so much blood shed?

Owning what we can’t keep

We got the land, wrestled it from the Boers in fact. Today we own the land. But what we have
won, what we now own, we can’t keep. We can’t use. We are leasing it. We are leasing it, often
back to the very white man we ejected at such horrendous cost to ourselves and those we sire. As
we all know, the arm of the white man is long, his pale heart unforgiving. In remembers all hurts,
forgiving none. In 2000, we started a fight set to last across generations, until we succumb, or
succeed emphatically.

Now, that which we have wrestled through so much, for so much, today we lease back to the
despoiler. What are we saying about our Independence, our sovereignty? It is up for lease? It has
a buyback value? It is something we own sentimentally yet are prepared to lose in usufruct
terms? Is that the disposition of keepers, of owners, of an economic people? Are we deserving
owners of the biblical vineyard? Are Zimbabweans ever “homo economicus”, ever economic
beings? Or we seek the political kingdom only?

But the war had economic goals?

The issue of indigenisation. The political goals are remarkably clear, well beyond faulting. We
must own our resources, benefit from them, be controlling sharers in their exploitation. They are
non-renewable, finite. Who quarrels with that speckless argument? Who? Yet a people who
fought and won a vicious war today cannot translate that laudable wish into a simple, workable
policy? We have policies to keep the 400-plus British companies here, all alive, comfortable. We
have beautiful policies for a perfect neo-colony, even intellectual warriors to defend and press
for it. But we have no policy, not even an iota, with which to assume ownership of what is ours,
and to turn that which is ours into a performing asset able to feed our children. Or to fashion
partnerships that ensure we have a substantive presence in that equation.

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Zimbabwe: The Numerate Nation that can’t

count
March 22, 2014 Nathaniel Manheru, Opinion & Analysis

Those we send to represent us in those partnerships think they are there to draw trinkets from
foreigners they themselves must fool with trinkets to conquer knowledge, expertise and
technology. What happened to the instinct of conquest? Those we send to represent us don’t even
know why they are there, where to look, what to get? We, the most numerate on the continent
can’t count what a 50-50 percent partnership brings home? Biti raved about diamond revenue,
yet two of his officials sat on the Mbada Board. Yet he prats about catching what we eat when
we can’t even eat what we have caught? Or even know we have caught and must just skin, cook,
then eat? Did the war not teach us to sing: “Nyika yedu yeZimbabwe ndimo matakazvarirwa/
Vana mai nababa ndimo mavari/ Tinoda Zimbabwe nehupfumi hwayo hwese/ Simuka
Zimbabwe!” The war had clear economic goals: the land, the economy. We have forgotten and
so we have a real problem. And as in the Augustan age, the message to ourselves is a very simple
one: man, know thyself!

Spoiled in second start

I was at some planning meeting recently. There is a new blueprint for the alluvial diamond
industry. Foreigners will soon leave, and we shall restore ourselves as sole owners of that
resource, or what remains of it. We have to buy out those foreigners. And again, this is where the
horror begins: what subsists in buying out foreigners? The subsoil asset which is ours, which
foreigners will proffer and offer back to us as theirs for purposes of being bought out?

Or it shall be those mangled pieces of moving parts of iron only, which is what they brought in
from their far off lands, all to scoop our subsoil resource? Or worse, buying out imaginary
shares, all of them falsely stout, and buying real liabilities, ever mounting, incurred in extracting
our finite resources which were spirited out of the country, leaving behind mounds and mounds
of dead soil, mounds and mounds of unpaid bills? The national genius must be brought to bear
on this one, and Government must summon all the legal skills which it built anyway, so we get
this one right. It is a harbinger to many more deals we shall have to make, or many more chances
we are fated to miss in this new war against the same old enemy.

Production-sharing agreements?
Interesting thinking is beginning to evolve. Some little bird is whispering about production-
sharing agreements with foreigners in mining. Over 20 countries across the continent are doing
that. But what is that? Let’s research, dear reader, so we contribute to this critical debate in
which inheres the fate of our nation, possibly of Africa to the extent that we have become the
trail-blazer in this new yet old war for statehood.

You do not demand 51 percent shareholding, something which can easily translate into 51
percent of dead shares, of liabilities. You claim 51 percent of mineral output, all after proper
costing and discounting inputs. You demand 51 percent of real minerals, real mineral output, not
the dollar value of that output, much worse dividend. That way you handle real wealth, stockpile
it, dispose of it advantageously, use it to back up your currency, to borrow, etc, etc.

Not this ridiculous and ludicrous habit of waiting upon the goodness of an investors, who are
never good definitionally. You can’t inventory what is happening in the business. Today most of
the platinum claims are due to expire, and soon we will have to take a decision as a nation
whether to renew the present unfairness for another two decades, whether to cancel the
unfairness completely, or whether to set out completely new parameters of engagement in ways
that begin to give form to the inchoate indigenisation “policy” we brag we have. And couple
those new parameters to refining, thereby maximising value and accountability of these habitual
swindlers called foreign investors. We are on the cusp of new things, and one hopes between
those broad national shoulders balances a thinking head, not an ankle bone decorated by sinewy
tissue.

Restructuring for the Pope?

And lately we have seen more gokoras — ankles — between national shoulders, not brains. We
have two sets of tendons pretending to be thinking heads. In Government, the focus — total
focus — has been on restructuring parastatals and state-linked companies. All laudable, all most
laudable. Corruption must be extirpated, branch and root.

But the main and only preoccupation can’t be to curb corruption and salary abuses. The raison de
être of those enterprises was never to employ executives, apparently the current misconception
guiding the hand of Government. The reason for their existence was and had been to actualize an
entrepreneurial State, to actualize State presence in the market as a proactive player. It is a
timeless goal, one made more timeless by this resource era Africa is living through. Where is the
restructuring blueprint for such an eventuality?

Long after we have descended our parastatal executives – whether gently or roughly – from the
stratospheric incomes zone to the terra firma which you and me inhabit, we shall soon discover
we are doing no better in our interaction with foreigners, or in our performance as a State that
must transform from being a political formation into an entrepreneurial proposition. For the
greater thieves have been foreigners, never these petty, pilfering or filching, consumerist
officials. Those steal small change, where the so-called investors steal a destiny, an endowment.

The morning after, we shall realize we have become a vanquishing nation of upright paupers,
never a dashing nation of economic players who own. Even when read against the four goals of
ZIM ASSET, the current restructuring, if one it is, does not make sense. How does trimming a
CEO’s income help value-addition, make ZMDC an enlightened partner in a joint venture with
Mbada?

The return of flashes of genius

The second strand comes from the opposition and its institutions. In a bid to divert attention from
the warring MDC-T, and from the dying Tsvangirai, there is this contrived discourse struggling
for attention and currency. It is the discourse on an economy supposedly sinking deeper and
deeper into destitution, its leadership completely clueless and inattentive. That discourse is
dutifully backed by statistics of folding companies, and phony, oppositional yells of offers of
help. I have a plan, Tsvangirai says, a plan I am only ready to share with the President if he
invites me to State House for a talk. Is it hankering for those pancakes?

Here is a man who has been in Government for a full five years, under Mugabe. For that long he
had no plan to unveil. For that long he could not even redeem his record, which is why the voter
spat on him. Suddenly he has had a flash of genius, the same week his leadership comes under
siege, all from within. Who does not know he needs a photo-opportunity with which to stabilize
the politics of his party?

Crying over dying Rhodesia

But that is not my point. It is this incapacity of Zimbabweans to read the real economy they must
seek to revive, the real spurts that give impetus to recovery of the real national economy they
must focus on. Surely it cannot be those decrepit pieces of gnarling, fangled metal we call “our”
industry, those things we collectively group under this misnomer acronym, CZI! What is there to
salvage? Who is there to look at that Rhodesian relic?

Tsvangirai maybe, with wistful eyes shining with tears of nostalgia of his days in Bindura. It is
the sight and childish dream of a worker, not an owner of a country. Much worse, it is the yearn
of a disembodied worker, not a proud son of a peasant or landowner. Much worst, it is a
hankering after a white Rhodesian economy but without grasping its real quick. Surely even the
Rhodesians will tell you on their half-wakefulness that their economy came from the
countryside, came from agriculture? And when a full-blooded Zimbabwean, of peasant born,
does not realise or read that something dramatic has happening in agriculture this season, then
you wonder why colonialism still distracts him so severely, so efficiently.

And when that Zimbabwean does not realize that when the countryside smiles, the whole
economy burst into guffaws of fitful laughter, then you know his head can’t be correct. Much
worse if they are politicians. Then they don’t realise 2018 is being won today, what with what
had become of agriculture under the Inclusive Government. When defeat comes they will still
murmur about a stolen election. The Rhodesian economy is daily folding up; the Zimbabwean
economy is well on the rebound.

Let the dying Rhodesians cry; let real Zimbabweans strategise on how to turn this agricultural
bumper into the beginnings of an industrial boom. Or we shall be the numerate nation which
couldn’t count.

Icho!
  [email protected]

EU/Africa Summit: Redrawing geography,

values
March 29, 2014 Nathaniel Manheru
Morgan Tsvangirai

It must be very frustrating for Morgan Tsvangirai. He summons a show-of-unity press

choreography today, Biti in glum tow. The following day you have Mangoma hyping dissent and
militantly telling the world there is no substitute for Tsvangirai’s resignation. Another day later,
you have Mudzuri weighing in, loudly to say MDC-T needs a no-holds-barred indaba
characterised by tolerance and unstinted speech. Both statements are not quite in accord with the
“We are back together again” headline of the leader’s press conference.

Quite the contrary they give sinister semantic value to Biti’s long glumness, one intermittently
broken by this what-is this-simpleton-up-to wry smile.

Squeezing an unripe abscess

And a real simpleton Tsvangirai is proving to be, including when measured by the contents of his
address. His “robust debate” postulate bears no relationship with his rally message alleging
sinister conspiracies. His claim that his party is not a movement in “turmoil” and “disintegration”
only serves to convince the bystander that not only is he in the storm of fissiparous politics; he
has also found the right adjectives for describing it, albeit through denial.

And the question we ask is whether, having realised the enormity of the problem, he has decided
to take a tactical retreat through fawned hatchet burial? Whether, to put it in local figurative
parlance, he has now realised he was trying to squeeze dry an unripe abscess? The cockpit he
makes reference to stands odd and obscene, a pretext for unleashing more autocracy while
claiming the dawn of “robust debate”. “What is important is that there has to be stability in the
cockpit and there has to be discipline in the ranks. We want everyone to fall in line.” Here is an
ultra-modern imagery for an antediluvian style of exercising authority!

A moment of epiphany?

And of course an admission of the slippery slope he seeks to clamber: “I want to acknowledge
the fact that no one is guilty until proven guilty by the right forum, so everyone is innocent.”
Really? It takes a bruised potbelly, a broken shirt front, a series of hostile, denunciatory rallies
for a real leader to realise this elementary principle of natural justice? Mangoma was never more
right, more borne out than now. But even then, Tsvangirai could not fool even himself, much as
he believed he was staging a believable act. Anger obtruded, uncapped. From nowhere he adds:
“Haikona kusvina mota risati raibva”, which roughly translated means do not squeeze an unripe
abscess; wait for it to suppurate. Who was supposed to be pelted by this loaded verbal sling?
Who? Consumer beware.

The Russian bear on prowl

Barack Obama

Comrade Putin has moved, emphatically stamping his authority in Crimea, leaving his opponents
wistfully wondering whether or not he will move into Eastern Ukraine where a pro-Russian
sentiment is brewing, boiling, even spilling over. Most probably not, but he has shown he has the
means and will to do it, in the process daring America with its nearly black president. Obama is
angry, very angry, but it is the anger of impotence.

Just devoting two lengthy addresses to attacking President Putin in Brussels is enough tribute to
his bete noire. Putin has succeeded in irking the big man of the world and what better victory
does one need after poking the lofty eye of a giant bully, throwing him into a rage? America is
processing a US$1bn aid package for Ukraine, a billion it never had. It has to shore up its pitiable
politics in Eastern Europe, now in near tatters. It is much worse. It has had to commandeer the
IMF to cough up $18bn to prop a venal oligarchy far well beyond redemption, in the process
straining the West’s means of subverting the world through a veneer of multilateralism.
Anything that stretches thin western means to destabilise, is good enough. Much worse, when he
was in Europe, Obama realised how helplessly dependent on trade with Russian troubled Europe
is, including Germany, the powerhouse economy of a sickly continent. And how far Europe is
from generating energy alternatives to what the bear provides. That sobered him up, in the
process making him realise power and alliances do have limits, as also does patience when taxed
to the limit. Thankfully, the goons in Kiev have not been as foolish as Shakesville, the mad man
of Georgia who dared the bear, earning its fangled wrath. They have behaved quiescently
limiting their response to hard words, unmatched by wooly actions. But all this is just an entry
point to my subject for the week.

President Mugabe

Shouting for Europe

The EU-Africa Summit seems in doubt. The President of Zimbabwe and his delegation are no
longer going. The Summit itself was scheduled for early days of April, the month of fools. And
Europe’s subaltern propaganda wheels here have been turning, grinding basic truth in the
process. I am talking about the shallow African press here, always dutifully ready to send or
receive blows for Europe. Joined by Cde Sikhala who thinks the best way to vindicate his return
to mainstream opposition politics is by tackling the President of Zimbabwe, however
gratuitously.
Be seen to pick a quarrel with legends, and you also grow enormously, to the stature of your
quarrelling partner! That seems to be the logic visiting this raw man of shifty, mercurial politics,
a man whose politics begin and end with the first and last letter of a village epithet respectively.
Let the truth be proclaimed here and now, so you, gentle reader, may know what really is at
stake. Africa may not go to Brussels. Or may very well be divided over Brussels. Whichever
way, the outcome will present Europe with an embarrassing deficit, endow Africa with growing
confidence as an independent actor in world affairs. For without the whole of Africa in
attendance, it shall never be the EU-Africa Summit which the EU proclaimed and envisioned,
but something smaller, something more accurately described as a parody of Africa. And France-
Africa Summit, or even lesser gatherings, might appear more successful, more representative
than the so-called EU-Africa Summit. April is the month of fools.

When AU is not Africa

But the rain did not begin to beat us in 2014. It did well much before, and this is where facts
should be presented without a skew. Firstly, Africa wanted the ill-fated Summit named the EU-
AU Summit. That was many years ago. The EU would have none of it, for just the fact of two
sub-regional organisations appearing to meet as so, conveyed some imputation of parity which
racist Europe abhorred. For over a century, the EU-Africa relations have always been founded on
asymmetry. So the Europeans insisted it had to be an EU-Africa summit, as if to suggest the EU
was meeting a market, meeting some imperfect, inchoate geography, never an equal and
equivalent political formation.

That way the stage was set for a condescending palaver, the full implication of which is just
beginning to unravel. This supercilious attitude apart, there was and is a more compelling
motive. The AU excludes Morocco, includes Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, SADR for
short. The one is a country, expansionist one at that, the other a liberation movement, the last on
the continent. And the two are locked in that familiar decolonisation fight, with larger Africa
weighing in on the side of SADR. That support to SADR got Morocco to opt out of the AU, then
OAU, way back in the early eighties. Europe views Morocco as a strategic entrepôt to the
continent, regards SADR as a liberation nuisance. When it meets with Africa, Europe wants that
meeting to include Morocco, to exclude SADR. And invoking the name of AU does not quite
achieve that, given that Morocco is not a member, and SADR is a member. This is a key
consideration in the current stand-off between Europe and Africa, and the lackey press will not
say so.

Then CAR and Egypt

Secondly, Europe does not quite find Eritrea — an African country — that handsome, and this
on various grounds. Apart from its unlikeable Isiahas Afeworki, the EU thinks Eritrea arms
insurgency in Somalia. Besides, Eritrea has had periodic run-ins with Ethiopia, EU’s darling. But
Eritrea is part of Africa, a full member of the AU. Framing the summit as pitting the EU against
the AU would force Europe to sit eye to eye with the reviled Aferworki and his Eritrea. Another
point, the AU has its own mores and parameters for sanctioning all those of its members who
will have transgressed those mores or values. AU no longer recognises power grabs. It has taken
a very strong stance against tribal and regional pogroms, genocides if you will. It’s sanctions
include suspensions and outright expulsions.

To date a good number of countries are under suspension, CAR and Egypt included. Europe does
not worry much about CAR, an African backwater, an instance for showing Western
benevolence over regressing, atavistic Africa. But Europe worries stiff about Egypt, a multi-
billion dollar market, only in temporary and calibrated turbulence Europe wishes will soon come
to pass. That means Egypt, Africa’s political outlaw is at the same time Europe’s coveted
interlocutor. What happens when two sevens clash? How do you engage from a position of
respect and equality a continent whose decisions and values you seek to undermine?

Thabo Mbeki

Defending great principles

It gets worse. Sudan is under ICC sanctions. Africa challenges those sanctions, and rejects the
notion of sitting heads becoming subjects of world litigation. Such an arrangement, far from
ending the so-called culture of impunity, makes peace vanish on the continent. Mbeki put it so
well. There are times when peace and settlement comes before justice. If we had the ICC and it
had requested us to surrender de Klerk, added Mbeki, we would not have obliged. South African
peace and settlement came a distant first, well away from Rome and its vindictive statutes.
Remember that?

So Africa has not recognised the ICC ruling on Sudan and her Al Bashir, a sitting African head
of State. Africa has gone much further. Provoked by the case of Kenya, where a sitting head of
State and his deputy are subject of similar action, Africa took a collective stance of getting the
ICC to drop that case, change its ways, or else provoke Africa to pull out, en bloc. As expected, a
robed Arab is a sight of great perturbation to the European, which is why they cannot
countenance the attendance of Bashir, a man who will not go to Europe anyway.

But for Africa, there is a great principle at stake here, as there is on Morocco/SADR, as there is
on Eritrea, indeed as there is on Egypt. The essence of international diplomacy, whether between
states or between continents, is mutual regard and respect. You do not seek to redraw the map of
another continent, and still pretend some respectful regard towards it. You do not pee on values
held dear by a country or continent, and still pretend to engage as equals. Lastly, you do not
suggestively crouch atop decisions of your interlocutor country or continent, and still pretend
you are its equivalent, or wish its homogeneity for everlasting continuance. This is what is at
stake, and let no amount of oversimplification or one-sidedness stand in the way of facts.

One ill-mannered host

And now the smallest part of the altercation, yet with possibly the greatest implications for
Zimbabwe and the continent. When it came to Zimbabwe, the EU climbed down from its pre-
2007 obduracy. It did not invoke the phony sanctions or human rights arguments, to disallow
Zimbabwe from participating. It would not have made sense against the 2007 meeting in
Portugal which Zimbabwe attended, and also against moves which the EU made to remove
sanctions. Above all, such a demand would have revealed the lack of consensus within the EU on
Zimbabwe. And the British were not foolish to stretch it.
Omar al Bashir

So President Mugabe got his invitation and, on the strength of it, proceeded to put together his
delegation. That delegation included his wife, something barely noticed or ever unexpected in
State interactions. At that point the British came in, alone. Against the whole of Europe, they
insisted no visa had to be granted to Amai Mugabe, the wife of President Mugabe, the First Lady
of Zimbabwe, itself State invitee to the EU-Africa Summit. Through that decision to deny the
First Lady of Zimbabwe a visa, the EU sought to rearrange the delegation of a sovereign state.
That amounts to a challenge on Zimbabwe’s statehood. And by denying the President of
Zimbabwe the company of his wife, EU was being a very bad, ill-mannered host, possibly with
sinister motives. And that odd decision could not be explained away by simply saying the EU-
Africa Summit has no programme for spouses. Well, there does not have to be, but which need
not make wives superfluous to their husbands, if we were to reduce matters to the barest
minimum. And dismissing this act of utter disrespect in the name of the First Lady’s so-called
shopping sprees, all concocted, suggests African demand for Europe’s finished goods injures the
EU and its economy. What a stupid argument! Why did Europe colonise Africa in the first place,
but to create markets for its finished goods? Why hide naked animosity and ill-will behind
fawned moral fastidiousness? Surely if the well-being of Zimbabweans is European concern, let
the sanctions then go?

Gay values?

What is not known by those who look at issues glibly is that all this is the thin end of the wedge.
We are on the cusp of an evolving relationship between the EU and Africa, and much rests on
Africa’s response and resolve. By picking and choosing, the EU has repudiated Africa’s political
geography, substituting it with its own, for its own ends. It has challenged the sovereignty of a
continent. By disregarding Africa’s ruling mores, and the enforcement of the same, the EU is
challenging Africa’s evolving value system on the basis of which a continent is defined, held
together. Yes, by subverting Africa’s sanctions against its errant membership, the EU is not just
undermining Africa’s membership, but also attacking the cohesion and compliance of that
membership. Lastly, by putting apart what God has knitted together in matrimony, Europe is
seeking to be that God, indeed to challenge the sanctity of African marriage, itself a prologue to
the insertion of gay values over whose rejection Museveni is paying the aid price.

Challenging continental leadership

Much more, and this is the missed part, by challenging Africa’s January 2014 Resolution
outlining parameters for inter-continental engagement, the EU is more than condescending; it is
challenging Africa. For Zimbabwe specifically, the EU is telling Africa and sadc that you made a
mistake by appointing Mugabe deputy chair, by putting him in the line of chairmanship. For that
you shall have a frozen year. The EU mortally fears a sadc and an AU under Mugabe’s
chairmanship. It seeks to test Africa’s readiness to take a stance in defence of Zimbabwe’s
chairmanship, well ahead of its assumption. If Africa blinks, Europe will insist that Zimbabwe is
skipped, never mind that it now sits in the chair of deputy. That way Africa will have rearranged
the leadership of the continent. And if Africa does not act as one, or at the very least, act as a
majority block, then her chance to enforce equality is irretrievably lost. It is not about the First
Lady; it is about the impending chairmanship of Zimbabwe.

Meeting the whole of Europe

Europe has crossed the line, the same way they did over Ukraine. President Putin gave Europe a
substantive response, and the West is backing off with ignominy, trimming its response to moral
platitudes, homiletic calls. Can Africa do the same? The whole Summit was stuffed with issues
of governance, well away from issues of mutually gainful trade, investments and processing. We
were going there to listen to Moses hand down more commandments, beyond the 10 which the
real God gave the world. There was very little of value, certainly nothing more important than
the continent’s worth and sovereignty. Maybe the time has come for Africa to insist on meeting
the EU as the AU. If not, to insist that it meets Europe, the whole of it. That includes Russia,
Belarus and many others.

Icho!

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