TIGblogs - davyk

Collapse of the neoliberal regime change model

AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona P. Mahoso

THE same Anglo-Saxon media which marketed the invasion of Iraq as a selfless exercise in exporting democracy and human rights or as an exercise in altruistic "nation creation" are today packaging the most serious capitalist crisis since the 1930s as a mere housing market "credit crunch" or as simply a "world financial crisis" which can be fixed with one US Congressional "bail-out" package.

But for Zimbabwe, the ongoing capitalist crisis is as important as the US-UK invasion of Iraq in March 2003. For thinking Zimbabweans the joint illegal invasion of Iraq by the US and UK in 2003 helped to expose and destroy the model of sponsored democracy which the same countries had initiated through the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and its NGO allies here. One remembers how the MDC objected to media programmes debating the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Iraq against popular opinion in the US and UK and against international law. Likewise, for thinking Zimbabweans, the bursting of the global bubble of the neoliberal casino economy has exposed and destroyed the neoliberal economic model in the same way Iraq destroyed the political model of Anglo-Saxon regime change as "democracy".

Contrary to this history, however, the newly elected Speaker of the Parliament of Zimbabwe told the New Labour Congress in Manchester about British democracy and the British economy as models for the next government of Zimbabwe to follow. Yet the British themselves right now cannot even follow what they themselves have been doing to their economy and their politics. The last thing they can understand is being praised as the model for a "new" Zimbabwe to follow in the wake of the September 15 2008 inter-party agreement.

Eleven years ago, Executive Intelligence Review warned about the neoliberal casino economy and how it was related to the imperialist regime change politics in which the MDC was to be one of the projects:

In January 1997 editors of Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) published a paper on the Internet called "George Bush’s Heart of Darkness — Mineral Control and Africa". This was an attempt to be as blunt as possible about the post-modern, post-Cold War version of the myth of the survival of the fittest and the way African lives and interests were being devalued in the media and in white public opinion in preparation for actual trampling over them:

"It has become a standard rule among practitioners of mass murder in Africa to justify their policies with the Malthusian myth that, since Africa has too many people any way (which is a lie), the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Africans are part of a necessary ‘solution’ to the ‘overpopulation problem’. Such claims were heard in 1994."

The editors of EIR then quoted a Mr Dick Cornelius of the US State Department’s Office of Population, Refugees and Immigration as telling one journalist that:

"The people dying at the moment are not the main issue in (Rwanda). I mean 50 000 people dying of cholera is alarming — but on the grand scale of things, looking at the impact on population in Africa and the region, it is a drop in the bucket."

The editors of EIR also accused the British government’s Secretary for International Development, Lynda Chalker, of voicing views similar to those of the US State Department in an effort to divert attention from the fact that Rwanda was subjected by the IMF and World Bank to a neoliberal structural adjustment programme which was tantamount to "economic genocide" before the cornered population turned on one another in actual violent genocide.

The editors of EIR then turned to the reason why the North Atlantic states were bent on intervening in Africa through regime change projects:

"Driving the British (and US) actions this time is another Great Scramble. The international financier oligarchy, grouped around the House of Windsor, knows that the world financial bubble (that is the casino economy of neoliberal reform) — which they themselves have created — cannot be sustained, and will burst. They are getting out of paper financial instruments and into hard commodities: precious metals, such as gold; strategic metals such as cobalt and tantalum; base metals such as copper and zinc; energy supplies; and increasingly scarce food supplies."

But, are we cooking up a false link between regime change politics here and the neoliberal casino economy now in shambles? Does that link exist in fact? The link has been made on a global scale. It is being challenged on a global scale. According to Naomi Klein, the world has been awakening out of the global hegemony of neoliberal "democracy" marketed as regime change.

"And as people shed the collective fear that was first instilled with tanks and cattle prods, with sudden flights of capital and brutal cutbacks, many are demanding more (real) democracy and more control over markets. These demands represent the greatest threat of all to Milton Friedman’s legacy because they challenge his most essential claim: that capitalism and freedom are part of the same indivisible project."

Therefore, in the case of Zimbabwe, overthrowing the Zanu-PF Government was presented by the Anglo-Saxon powers as democratic because it would return all the now reclaimed African land to white landlords and white-controlled multinational corporations. It would restore "free markets".

Naomi Klein continues in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism:

"The Bush administration remains so committed to perpetuating this false union (between neoliberal capitalism and democracy) that, in 2002, it embedded it in the National Security Strategy of the United States of America."

This then meant that Zimbabwe’s rejection of a US-sponsored political and economic model could and would be interpreted as a threat to North American and Anglo-Saxon security and interests.

"The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom — a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy and free enterprise," according to the Bush administration in 2002.

When this market worship is exported to the South it tends also to be mixed up with white worship.

Therefore the admiration of British interference in Zimbabwe and the admiration of the British economy voiced by the newly elected Speaker of the Zimbabwe House of Assembly at Manchester this September was shocking but not surprising.

It was shocking because it followed the signing of the MOU and the inter-party agreement between Zanu-PF and the MDC formations which are founded on the condemnation of outside interference in Zimbabwe’s politics and the economy.

It was not surprising because the MDC formations were set up as regime change projects based on the twin models of unipolar imperialist politics and neoliberal economics which have now crumbled over Iraq and over the so-called "credit crunch" in the US and the UK.

It was not surprising because the sponsored media outlets supportive of the foreign regime change project here had for 10 years consistently promoted such market worship mixed up with white worship.

The Zimbabwe Independent is one of those sponsored media outlets.

Let us consider at length a letter published in the paper in early 2006 by Alistair Hull and entitled "Enjoy it while it lasts, comrades".

"The New World Order advocates (seen here as Anglo-Saxons) will ultimately implement a one-world political system which will operate from a major city somewhere in Europe where there will be a global economy and a one-world religious system, that is, the much-talked-about ecumenical church . . .

"Elements of our paranoid (Zimbabwean) leadership keep babbling on about sovereignty and the fact that we will never be a colony again. They keep on accusing the World Bank and the IMF of having ulterior motives for Zimbabwe.

"The IMF and the World Bank are just one of the ‘1 000 points of light’ President (George) Bush (Senior) spoke about at the same time he announced the coming new world order.

"The ‘1 000 points of light’ he mentioned are the various organisations and institutions that are slowly and insidiously doing the groundwork for a new world order.

"Any country whose government does not conform to this will ultimately be brought down by whatever means the new world order (Anglo-Saxons) see fit.

"President Mugabe and Zanu-PF are bucking the new world order and will ultimately be brought down by these people whether they like it or not as was Ian Smith and Rhodesia. We are all pawns in a game — they had better believe it."

Now, this problem of market worship as white worship affects the viability of the recently signed inter-party agreement.

If we were to use Frantz Fanon’s class analysis, we find that one of the parties to the agreement engages in neo-liberal market worship confused with white worship.

In Fanon’s view, this party mistakes for a new dawn and breakthrough the exact dead-end of the Western neo-liberal system and its unipolarism.

How then can this very same party forge a partnership with another party which has always seen its mission as to liberate the country and the people from the very same Anglo-Saxon hegemony which the other party mistakes for a new era of liberty?

Most significantly, the debate over the so-called global financial crisis or the credit crunch in Washington and London totally excludes the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund which the very same Anglo-Saxon powers and their MDCs have always insisted must dictate economic policies to us.

Eddie Cross, as the MDC economic advisor, has always insisted on our acceptance of dictation from the IMF and the World Bank. The Zimbabwe Independent on April 16 1999 did not only recommend this market worship as a substitute for policy-making; it also clearly and correctly associated Zanu-PF with our national resistance to neo-liberalism and unipolarism: This is what the editor of The Zimbabwe Independent wrote:

"There are elements within the ruling party that would want to plunge this country into political and economic chaos by resorting to populist choices for reasons of short-term political expedience . . . It is this same clique that wants to introduce price controls and embark on a destructive land acquisition exercise where law, productivity and foreign confidence are of no account.

"And the overriding concern is a childish desire to please President Mugabe.

"The stock market retreated this week while severe foreign currency shortages brought trading almost to a halt.

"The markets are sending a very clear message to the Government and the party which we ignore at our peril.

"Put simply, the markets do not approve of Government cutting ties with the IMF and the World Bank because they understandably doubt whether Zimbabwe has the capacity to go it alone.

"Just as importantly, the private sector is accurately aware of the magnitude of the international fall-out should the Government decide to ditch the twin institutions whose financial support underpins the whole (market) reform process and provides a signal to other donors and investors. And this is the point that the Government seems to completely miss."

Now that it is the highly worshipped market which has crashed and the World Bank and the IMF don’t have a clue because they are part of the problem, where then do the MDC formations, the Zimbabwe Independent and Alistair Cooks intend to take us next?

Is Morgan Tsvangirai still sourcing economic advice from the same regime change sponsors whom Lovemore Moyo went to worship at Manchester? How should the people of Zimbabwe take such neo-liberal myopia?

And how will the inter-party agreement survive such stark divergences in economic policy?