When the king abdicates . . .!
A time to re-load
SORRY folks, I took a long leave in order to reload. Often, readers forget weekly writings require years of stocked reading material. But there comes a time when the stock runs out, making renewal necessary. I was burning out. In the intervening period, so much has happened without giving my own take on these events. I hope to catch up, ending any conjecture. Of course I will sample poignant developments, to avoid a clutter.
Victory and Reprisals in the South South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and won, albeit preliminarily. A substantive decision on the nub of the challenge is yet to come. In the meantime, South Africa has gone a step further; she has taken the Zionist regime to the International Criminal Court (ICC). The jury is still out. My hunch is that the outcome might be within the precincts of that already handed down by the ICJ. Anything less or out places the ICC itself on trial. So much is at stake, with the same issue blowing back into USA, itself a staunch supporter of Israel. World opinion is decidedly against America, which is why the Biden Administration sought to placate truculent global opinion by slapping Israeli occupiers of Palestinian land in the West Bank with innocuous and indeterminate sanctions.
South Africa is set to pay heavily for this brave act against children of the world’s foremost god. She may have won the legal and moral law; she is set to lose respectability in the Western World. Alongside investments which come with that respect. I hope South Africa has girded her loins. The repercussions are no small matter; South Africa’s economy is fully integrated into the Western-led and controlled global capitalism. It may be vulnerable considerably.
Some superpower called Huawei There is another dimension which few have noticed. A bi-partisan sanctions bill has been drafted and awaits tabling in the American congressional system. The bill calls for a review of US relations with South Africa, the reason being that South Africa hobnobs with “malign” countries and corporates, typified by Russia, Iran, China, and Huawei. The last in this row of American infamy, is particularly interesting. Huawei is some Chinese telecommunication and digital behemoth, which is also on the cutting edge of Chinese research. American fear and vindictiveness against it gives Huawei the multiple aura of a country, a State and a rival superpower. How else does one interpret the logic of equivalency implied by its targeting in this extraordinary and unusual case?
Race for chip technology
I visited Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen a few years back. I toured its campus on applied technology. Then, Huawei was registering well over a thousand patents yearly, almost bringing it neck to neck with the best in the US. I don’t know about now; I doubt it has regressed. Therein lies its malignancy, in the eyes of American and the West. The company has gone where angels fear to tread, including in the holy zone of manufacturing semiconductors. Let me add that contestation over Taiwan is part of this broad, global fight for global techno-dominance, summarised in chip technology which does not come cheap. Taiwan accounts for 60% of production of semiconductors, and 90% of their most advanced versions. These semiconductors are critical in industry and arms race. A Taiwan which falls to its mainland parent, makes that critical technology available to China, or so America thinks and reasons. That argument implies that China does not have that capability already. Joseph Conrad calls it a saving lie; God save America!
Fight recedes into boardroom
To place all in context, we need to know the architecture of current global dominance. Traditionally, global dominance has rested on the power of arms, armies, economies, culture, models/best practices and the like. Today a new and decisive prong has been added: that of technology. This is why the Sino-US tussle has receded into the boardroom, making the Vice President of Huawei such a prized war captive in the long battle for this global dominance. I am wondering away; my focus is South Africa.
South Africa within America’s sights South Africa has now earned a place on the roll call of countries under American sanctions, thereby potentially joining Zimbabwe before long. The only difference may be on scale: both by way of size of offence allegedly committed, and by way of the probable scope of America’s reprisal. Of course Zimbabwe’s punishment was swift; South Africa’s is likely to be gradual, to allow American and other Western companies time to disinvest, retreat and relocate. American investments in Zimbabwe were a minuscule, small beers really. Little stood imperilled, or to be lost, which is why no time was wasted in administering lasting punishment. Not so in South Africa. The Jewish Lobby which controls all America, is very angry with South Africa. It is also heavily invested in the same country. It is likely to tread carefully. Still it has galvanised its scions in South Africa — led by the Oppenheimers — to create a beachhead of the eventual assault on South Africa and the ANC. That is coming; sooner, whatever South Africa’s present diplomatic overtures to America may amount to. The ANC needs to bend double, particularly in the forthcoming plebiscite which global Zionism has identified as a good Trojan Horse for some regime change assault. Zimbabwe has a dog in this fight. ANC must not fall, for our sake. In Botswana, too, BDP must not fall, again for our sake.
A minion usurps power to write rules Why is South Africa’s ICJ victory so important to global politics, so incensing to America? Simply because a global minion has wrestled the means to rewrite global rules, rules that threaten to bind elders of the current skewed world order. From World War One to World War Two, and especially beyond, the United States of America has wielded and exercised the power to write rules on which the whole global ethos has pivoted. It doesn’t matter in which sphere or realm; it has always been the USA: this one uninterrupted superpower between wars and after; even more complete and dramatically after 1989 following the fall of the Soviet Union. Mid-2020s, this American dominance began to falter and to get pecked by hitherto lesser, peripheral powers, economically led by China, India, Brazil and the like; militarily led by Russia and China, both now joined by North Korea, Iran and…even the Houthis of Yemen.
Wrestling the pen
South Africa, itself neither a military nor economic power, has slid in an embarrassing punch on an already reeling Goliath: through the ICJ ruling, South Africa has wrestled the pen and proceeded to re-write global rules on conflict and sanction. Don’t forget the current world order was begot by war and sanction. That explains the rheum raised by South Africa’ act of abomination, and the upset it has caused, in flagrant challenge to set rules, ordained logic and crafted aura of might! It is like the King has lost the sceptre to a global plebeian. Worse, the King is now also unhinged by senility, as does all things born long ago, once beautiful and now aged. Did you see the recent report on King Biden’s state of mind? What happens to the throne and Kingdom when King is ousted, or has abdicated?
King Nero abdicates Coming home, another king abdicated. Chamisa — our King Nero — is now gone. He abandoned the throne, in unceremonious, frenetic flight. His erstwhile subjects over whom he enjoyed suzerainty, are now in turmoil, unsure if the King can ever be persuaded back to the throne; or if the vacant throne can ever get a new King. Worse, unsure if the palace and its throne are still available. Indications are that there are new tenants, with King Nero, King Lear-like, roaming the wilderness, thoroughly stateless, only clinging to some colour.
Another country, another era
I notice even Chikanza of ZimEye notoriety now thinks the King’s silence and unknown whereabouts are adding to the confusion in the deserted kingdom. Equally, Trevor Ncube’s papers have since morphed out of denial, boldly but bitterly raising existential questions around King Nero, and his once sprawling demesne. Reality is seeping through, finally. Amidst the din of weeping, wailing, gnashing in King Nero’s Kingdom, a din peppered by rancour and mutual recrimination, very few appear to notice the seemingly imperceptible glacial movement in our politics. Hard-to-notice, yet inexorable and sure to make tomorrow another country. Another era.
Cathartic Moment
There is a lingering fixation with Chamisa the person; that is to be expected in a movement driven by trenchant cultism. That fixation is small; the majority has moved on, which means deserting the cultist, thoroughly disenchanted. More desertions are set to follow, with many vowing never to get back into opposition politics ever again. They are set to sink into professional anonymity; or simply to take a gap, as did their erstwhile master. Amidst all this mayhem, key changes are taking place in the body politic. First, furious internal mutual recrimination in Chamisa’s camp hide some far-reaching movement. The dogma of leadership infallibility which had encrusted onto opposition leaders thus saving them from necessary scrutiny, and which had stymied our politics, is now wearing out. This is a cathartic moment of our politics. Now the general sigh on Chamisa is to say: thou art a mere man, Nero, after all! This is the beginning of liberation within opposition ranks, well away from the burden of enthralling cultism.
Scapegoating is dead; long live truth Second and linked to first, scapegoating is wearing thin and has become an unconvincing alibi. For too long, it has been some form of escapism, some delightful flight from own incapacities. Today Chamisa’s people cannot, at one level mutually recriminate so publicly, without, at another level embracing and confronting their own responsibility and agency for what has befallen them. The bogey of Zanu PF can no longer wash, however tenaciously Chamisa’s donor supporters may try to cultivate it. Those politics which thrived on painting Zanu PF blacker than the devil, can no longer stick.
No god from the machine Third and critically, the two preceding points mean the opposition is now demolishing mythical saviours, having now realised they are mere men and women of frailties. Going past apotheosising Chamisa liberates opposition politics from cultism and this laughable belief in the Greek notion of deux ex machina (a god from the machine). Politics is a science, and the art of the possible. It is not a miracle favoured on the most prayerful. Nor can it spin out of the laughable paradoxical halo of monarchism without a monarchy. King Nero is now dead; so are his politics of divine kingship. Now there is bound to be a serious refocus towards rules, structures and a broad-based, shared leadership stratum at the helm, possibly obeying rules of electoral politics. Our politics are now rescuing themselves from utter degeneracy to which Chamisa had consigned them.
Foraging Tsvangirai’s tomb
But there are dangers, two in my view. One is groping for a new king, modelled along a dead one. Or a failed one. The opposition is gifted with both. There is a strand in opposition reaction which seeks to romanticise the late Morgen Tsvangirai, himself author of “big man politics” in the opposition. Pained acutely by Nero’s monumental failure of leadership, opposition followers are busy foraging Tsvangirai’s sepulchre, hoping to resurrect a romantic past and a romantic hero! Not helped by the fact that Chamisa deserted a few weeks before February 14, the date on which Tsvangirai’s demise is commemorated. For some psychological need and for contrast, Tsvangirai now looks flawless. In that imagined goodness, he, ironically enough, stands in the opposition’s way for ever re-imagining and re-inventing new politics and new leadership away from Nero’s disastrous reign. It’s a trap of recent history — some present agony which seeks succour and comfort in mythical past, in mythology. Breaking free won’t be easy, in the absence of frank assessment of the Tsvangirai era. It was Tsvangirai, after all, who let loose present chaos upon opposition politics.
Who breaks the wrongful mould? Second and even bigger, there isn’t recognition that the current crisis in the opposition is a crisis wrought by a wrong mould which long begot and continues to beget wrong politics. Worse, it is a received mould, an alien, donated one.
Put bluntly, it is a mould for neo-colonial politics which can never stick in a post-revolution Zimbabwe. No one in opposition remembers that what broke the camel’s back was the question of American and European patronage in opposition politics, with remnant Rhodesians as the dying subaltern of those politics.
No one in opposition wants to acknowledge this dire fact, which is why any talk of sanctions and/or land reforms gets those in opposition to fumble for a revolver. They are stuck in politics of the African askari whose reflex is defending foreign white interests. They see no contradiction in forsaking the dying Nero, while seeking to resurrect Tendai Biti. We all know what lies beneath Biti’s visage, and how ill-fated what lies beneath is. I have neighed enough! Welcome 2024!