Beware wolves in sheepskins *Stephen Mpofu Features Correspondent*
In old traditional farming practices in Zimbabwe, mixed cropping was used as a technology to confuse pests. Today, however, can anyone say with equanimity that the crop mixing of non-governmental organisations in this country has any benefits for the nation? In fact, are the so-called non-governmental organisations genuine purveyors of benevolence to poor nations, or are they hit squads as proxies of Western governments intent on changing political order in African countries whose policies the donors abhor? A “yes” or “no” answer will not do justice to the question, a “yes” and “no” answer provides a point of departure in motivating discussion on the real motives behind the planting of non-governmental organisations in almost all donor-fund recipient developing countries. Zimbabwe becomes a basket case in point, especially with recent disclosures in Britain by self-anointed dubious Friends of Zimbabwe to the effect that they had funnelled as much a US$2,6 billion for what they termed transitional development in the country since the formation of the inclusive government by Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations. Now look carefully at what is going on the ground in Zimbabwe and you wonder, gap-mouthed, where all that money went because your eye will be met with countless numbers of former workers trudging the streets after the same “Friends of Zimbabwe” shut down factories through their diabolic economic sanctions imposed as a reprisal for Zimbabwe’s land reform programme. And you see children pushing distended bellies for lack of nutrition after the same “Friends of Zimbabwe” snatched food from the mouths of these children by ruining the jobs of their parent — breadwinners. Look around again everywhere in the country and you are won’t to be met with forlorn facts as the future for most Zimbabweans grows bleaker, bleaker and more opaque and so this is what the dear friends of Zimbabwe call transitional development. Of course, all right thinking people know that transitional development is nothing, but a metaphor for regime change that the West has wanted and continues to want to exact by sidelining, and if possible obliterating altogether, Zanu-PF and its leader, President Mugabe, from the political scene in Zimbabwe to pave way for blue-eyed boys of the West to rule the country so that Zimbabwe might become a political and economic playground of the imperialist. What this suggests, therefore, is that some, if not most of governmental bodies operating in Zimbabwe are conduits through which the proponents of regime change have pumped those billions which has obviously ended up in the bottomless pockets of leaders of some political entities in this country as agents of the much wanted change of Government. These people, who run with the hare and hunt with the foreign hounds, have obviously fattened themselves on the huge windfall, or have they invested the dirty money in hopes of spending it on so-called transitional development when in power themselves without Zanu-PF which the West obviously regards as a political demagogue and one from which Zimbabweans must be spared? However, the people of this country know on which side their bread is buttered and so no amount of political witchcrafting with imperialist quislings running the errands as goblins will hoodwink Zimbabweans into turning their backs on people and the party that have freed them from an iniquitous colonial government that had turned them into slaves on their own land. It would, however, be grossly unfair of this pen to compartmentalise all non-governmental organisations in this country as being good for nothing. This is because there are those bodies operating out of the realm of Government authority and which go out of their way in times of need to serve the people of this country, say, by providing food aide or some such requirements to keep soul and body together. There are also those bodies operating outside of the framework of Government and which work for the elevation of women from walking perpetually in the long shadows of men and to equality with them in every aspect of human life. These are to be celebrated by all who do not pay lip service to equality. Nonetheless, those local non-governmental organisations that walk a revolutionary pathway and a revolution promotes equality and is probably more democratic than the much vaunted democracy of the West are to be counted on one hand. Be that as it may, this pen humbly, but strongly believes that the powers that be in our country should take such measures as will safeguard the lives of Zimbabweans from hyenas that come to us in sheepskin camouflaging their evil intentions, but claiming to be our friends. For instance, is there any godly reason under the sun for foreign non-governmental organisations to continue with their mischief making, in the process destabilising the country, while the Government watches as though those bodies are playing house? Will the Government lose anything by ridding the country of such malevolent organisations? In fact, does their continuing, surreptitious mayhem not give an unfortunate impression that the country is woefully helpless to take any remedial action against them? Food for thought. As for local non-governmental organisations that render themselves to foreign countries as tools for use in pushing alien agendas against their own people take them out of the pathway of the revolution so that our people have only one source of direction, their Government, into the future and not other powers that push their own interests before the interests of Zimbabweans. And wait a minute. Now let us reverse the bromide as a litmus test of the West’s genuine concern for humanity, all humanity. The West spends lots of money on “binoculars” to scan and magnify stys in the eyes of Africans and other, developing nations, while its centuries-old prejudices neglects swaying oaks in the West’s own eyes that obscure sometimes blatant violate the rights of blacks and of other minorities resident in the so-called civilised countries. Africans who have visited, studied or worked in Western countries are often shocked by their deplorable living conditions in ghettoes synonymous with animal cages after those souls of the royal black race were created away in ships to provide cheap labour as slaves in the West. That Zimbabweans and other Africans elsewhere on the continent do not fund bodies abroad to oversee the rights of the descendants of African slaves does not in anyway mean that Africa is no less concerned about the plight of our blood brothers and sisters, which is incomparable with the luxurious life styles of European settlers on the continent and about whose human rights we hear constant. Let us go a step further and demonstrate the existential, holier than thou nature of those in the West. When lives are violently lost in small nations Lilliputian political leaders are hauled before a Western-constituted International Criminal Court to answer charges of crimes against humanity. On the other hand, when Western armies massacre poor people in Africa and Libya is an example here in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the holy political Gullivers as commanders-in-chief get away with crimes against humanity. This pen in no way condones crimes against humanity committed in weaker nations. On the contrary, it questions the use of two different scales to weigh the same types of crimes and condemns the double standards implicit in the application of justice. But not to worry too much the in due course the sun will turn dark and the moon bloody to herald the advent of true justice.
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