Zimbabwe’s Crisis: A melting pot of Big Interests (Part 1)

By Pride Mkono

OPINION – There is an intensifying ‘new scramble’ for Africa which is taking shape and is set to have far reaching consequences for Africa’s economic and political future.

This new scramble for Africa, like that which ensued after the Berlin Conference of 1884, is an internecine competition for Africa’s resources by the leading global powers namely the US, the UK, Russia, China and France.

The recent Spy Tape leaks which Al Jazeera and the Guardian have been releasing have shown how Africa’s resources are a cause for intense completion among global powers.

Like the colonization period of 1884, the global powers are not fighting for ideological space but for resources.

All the super powers are pursuing their capitalist interest by securing territories in Africa in order to gain access to precious resources such as oil, gas, gold, diamond and uranium.

Again, just like the colonization period, the new ‘scramble’ involves on the ground presence of foreigners in African territories to further the interests of their nations.

Instead of missionaries and pioneer columns, the new scramble comes in form of intelligence operatives who infiltrate governments, companies and African Non Governmental Organizations in order to push the interests of their respective countries.

Zimbabwe has not been spared in this ‘new scramble’ and the Russians and Chinese have come out as the leading interest group in strategically positioning their countries for the eventual ‘milking’ of Zimbabwe’s resources.

The Sino-Russo interest group has already signed many economic partnership agreements with the government of Zimbabwe which are said to be worth billions of dollars in the infrastructure development and mining sectors.

The Russian have also expressed far reaching interests in the agricultural sector with the government of Zimbabwe believed to be in the process of allocating vast tracks of land to various Russian companies.

All these developments are occurring at a time when most of the west as represented by the UK, EU and the US are still undecided on how to engaged Zimbabwe in light of its delinquent behavior on the internal management of its issues around democracy and human rights.

There is a huge body of more than convincing evidence that implicate the current government led by Robert Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF), which point to state sponsored violence and endemic undermining of basic democratic tenets and the rule of law all coupled with grave elite corruption.

Even within the Sino-Russo bloc, there competing interests as each side is attempting to make most of the deals with Zimbabwe. As it currently stands the Chinese are clearly on the lead in asserting their position in Zimbabwe.

Firstly the Chinese have been for a long time hospitable to Zimbabwe’s tainted leadership of Mugabe and his ZANU PF party and to that end have extended support both moral and military whenever the Harare Regime was in need of help.

At the height of Zimbabwe’s crisis in 2008, China donated a ship load of weapons to Zimbabwe’s beleaguered establishment which led to a huge diplomatic row with South Africa after workers at the Port Elizabeth bay refused to offload the ship.

Secondly, Beijing was quick to seize business opportunities offered by Harare as the Chinese government actively supported hundreds of their citizens to set up small retail businesses in Zimbabwe especially after Harare adopted the multi-currency system in 2009. Further, the Chinese through their military connections soon set up diamond mining firms in partnership with Zimbabwe’s military top brass.

It is widely believed that the rapid multi-million dollar construction of the Military College in Harare and the Golden Peacock hotel in Mutare were achieved using diamond money which never got to the treasury.

The ZANU PF 2013 election campaign which was well resourced is also alleged to have been lubricated by diamond funds which again never found their way to the treasury.

In addition to the reasons outlined above, the Chinese recently introduced Africa’s second Chinese made super computer in Harare at the University of Zimbabwe. The super computer has a capacity to make over 36 trillion calculations per second making it one of the fastest machines in southern Africa. The main target areas for the computer are said to be research into agriculture, mining, weather forecast and gene technology.

It is however very apparent that given the little data that Zimbabwe has and the capacity of the machine, it is more than just for these seemingly civilian functions. Zimbabwe’s strategic geographical location at the centre of the sub-continent makes it a regional hub from where the Chinese can launch their campaign to ‘grab’ territories in Africa.

Again as in the first scramble for Africa in the nineteenth century, the Chinese have a dream to stretch their influence from the Cape to Cairo, with Zimbabwe being the engine room from where they would operate.

The super computer set up at the University of Zimbabwe will certainly also be used for intelligence gathering on Zimbabwe’s neighbors. Crucial information such as the movement of troops, air defense systems, armouries to even areas such as banking and financial transfers can easily be accessed and action can be relevantly designed to further the Chinese interests in any southern African territory of their choosing.

Domestically, the super computer can be used for a host other purposes including political planning. The ZANU PF government can easily get the population data for particular areas processed against the voting patterns and immediately action a political response that can further their interest and undermine that of other parties without access to this technology.

Even if the electronic voting system is introduced, which the civic society and opposition is campaign for, a computer of such magnitude and capacity can extensively tamper with the transfer of data from polling stations to the tallying centres leading to potential huge fraud that would be very difficult to appeal.

Thus politically, the huge foreign interests that have come to Zimbabwe have made ‘the struggle for Zimbabwe’ much more complex than when it reached its peak at the turn of the century. It is apparent that with guaranteed Sino-Russo support, ZANU PF can flout most electoral rules and still get away with it.

Russia and China, in protection of their interests, will veto any decision that would lead to the ouster of the Harare regime in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), thus action would be very difficult to take at global level should ZANU PF run amok.

In the event of serious threat to the lives of ordinary citizens, American and its allies are unlikely to directly interfere with military force because of vested Chinese and Russian interests. Thus in the event that Zimbabwe’s political standoff gets very tense we are likely to degenerate into a Ukraine or at worst Syria.

However given the general peaceful nature of Zimbabweans, that is highly unlikely, what is likely to happen is that ZANU PF will continue to hold periodic elections in which its campaigns will be well funded while the opposition will continue to be weak and divided. The outcome of such a process will be a ZANU PF victory and the consolidation of Sino-Russo interests in country.

In the final analysis it is clear that ‘the struggle for Zimbabwe’ is now more complex than it has ever been and will continue to get much more complex. With the west standing on the sidelines of the show and the opposition increasingly becoming weak and divided while the civic society is stuck in past strategies, all the essential ingredients for consolidating tyranny are on the table and all ZANU PF is doing is to prepare the dish.

There is thus need for review of strategies and actions to equal the unfolding realities, failure to rethink and re-strategize would mean prolonged entrenchment of the dictatorship and a death knell for democracy.

In the next installment this blogger will look at the options available in dissecting this convergence of interest in favor of Zimbabwean citizens’ long term interests.

Pride Mkono is Former ZINASU President, Environmental and Social Justice Activist; he can be contacted at [email protected]