dear, oh dear - seems like Mr Gowans has been smoking his tik pipe again. Must be all those sanctions that render a rational deliberative process impossible as the politics of 'cowboys and injuns' take centre stage disguised as some sort of intellectual narrative.

 

Does Gowans really believe that ZANU-PF in its current mutated madness (what decides a state of madness, in many countries madeness is a legislative question, but the point is that you have created an enclosure by saying you are normal and they are made, this has become a case of God and satan. Therefore your narrative should have ended here because your justification would be: for it is written and then quoting the relevant biblical verse. But anywhere, because you went on... )  has the interests of the majority (although you have not defined majority your assumptions are clear. But don’t minorities matter? Would you would rather freedom comes with the oppression of minorities) at heart? (But then why should ZANU PF to take care of interests of the people, people should take care of their owns interests. But of course the dominating discourse of bourgeoisie-democracy would rather we think only in terms of the state, because it needs the state for its purposes! Good one for the interests of the people. The simple logic of assigning so much power to ZANU PF works in more than one way, some of which are sharpening the accusations against ZANU PF and also preparing ground for transferring as much power to the MDC, and the people of Zimbabwe in both cases remain dominated. Where precisely does he suck that from - the buffet table at the Harare Sheraton? The mind boggles, but hey maybe there's an empirical basis for this - does Mr Gowans care to share this with us? Or will we simply be referred to back copies of the Herald, or maybe that awfully exciting magazine, New African  ....(Beautiful, what would you rather be referenced to? Which would be free from outright propaganda and bias, BBC, CNN or maybe the Zimbabwe Independent?) another forum for comic genius judign from those wonderful supplements paid for by the Zimbabwean government last year (please, for anyone who has them, do reread the Gideon Gono interview - priceless!)

 

The discourse as I have already said is locked up in an ‘essentialist’ structural point of departure.

 

I detract .. apologies.... (I am not sure about this but it can be very patronising and it sounds like a holier than thou way of dismissing a debate that one thinks should, according to the dictates of dominant discourse, not be even conceived.

 

It's certainly not news that civil society 'chefs' (in Zimbabwe or many other places for that matter) have been relying on neo-con funds for some time now - pretty inneffective if regime change was the cunning objective of the marionette masters in Washington, don't you think?! That folk such as Hove and Tsunga accept awards from dubious source or the organisations they front are funded from western (often right wing) sources hardly adds up to some sort fo coordinated initiative to undermine the 'revolutionary' programme of the great liberators (This is again dominating in that it tries to deny Zimbabwe its liberators because they have lost it along the way, let’s argue, but in reality the very concept of liberators is dominating, people liberated themselves. Is this a way of having us back here tomorrow when we will then be denying ‘today’s’ liberators?) (as Chinamasa and it would seem Mr Gowans would have us believe). If it were, it's been about as inneffective a strategy as you could get - and assumes the loons in Washington and London really know what they are doing and who they are dealing with. But I suppose with all that satelite technology, anythings possible ...

 

I rather enjoyed the Gowan's bits on Patrick Bond and now have images of him in a rather large swivel chair behind his control centre at the CCS pushing Zimbabwean and South African civil society buttons as part of some cunning conspiracy to keep the true revolutionaries in place. I always wondered what he was doing at those Free Burma Campaign (If you agree with one campaign which is supported by imperialists you are signing a contract to agree with all its projects. Is that how it should work? The unbreakable umbilical cord concept – so much for freedom) meetings when there were only 6 of us in the room - was it really part of his cunning entryist politics to prepare Burma for the beauties and beneifts of capitalism. Gadzooks, who can one trust (on whose terms is trust built on? That is another God and devil situation, no way out – just that the bible here is the dominant discourse as developed and monitored by the loud media and the powerful states) Mr Gowans? well, apart from Patrick Chinamasa that is .....

 

Once again the truth (most beautiful, games of truth, are oppressing as they silence us all on the notion that they are self evident, thus making us its unwitting gate watchers! Whose truth?) of what has actually transpired in Zimbabwe falls victim to a form of dot-to-dot matric marxism that's not alas even saved by the footnotes. The inference that Zimbabweans have no agency in the decisions made and actions taken, but are simply manipulated by Washington and the evil Dr Bond is grotesque and probably racist. (Most dangerous now! Because our discourse and our struggle has been hijacked by those who have the resources to do so, and those who have dominated the development of our domains of knowledge, languages and techniques there should be nothing wrong with pointing to that fact! Hold on, I think the response to this would be to accuse me of being contemptuous of Zimbabweans. You think you are SMART! But then of course those words will be expected to follow any challenge to the existence of races. Because race itself is concept of domination, it belongs to the very structure of language which is both structural and located within the field of power, by its dialectic nature. Let’s deal with this more thoroughly and trace the thought process, behind this outrage. – the logic you employed here is, well, if Gowan is saying that Washington and London are in control, then the people there are white and these people in  Zimbabwe are black, by that fact a claim that he is racist will hold. But Gowan may not be talking about racial manipulation but political and hence economic manipulation. So who is talking about racism who is racist? This again is an attempt of the dominant discourse to trap the whole discourse within its reason and rationale which it professes as self-evident and scientific.)

 

Nevertheless, I do hope these gems (Gowan’s dialectics are gems but mine are pure, never mind I am from the Holy School, which has a proven track record) from Gowans and his fellow travellers are archived for futrue generations to guffaw at - my particular favourite from this latest offering is - "That Zimbabwe's government has tried to preserve space for the exercise of political and civil liberties in the face of massive hostile foreign interference is to be commended." (Well just as mockery, because these spaces are only allowed by any government to the extent that it feels they do not threaten the establishment. E.g in the United Kingdom any group of more than one person that wants to make a public event, must be sanctioned by the police, yet in Zimbabwe it was 5 or more. But that is neither here nor there because the violence of state apparatus is evident anywhere in the world, as long as a created space starts to pose a threat to the powers that be then drastic measures will be taken, Glen Eagles, Seattle and all of them are also examples. The daily violence of the British police against the Smash IDO campaign is another clear example as these people are legitimate citizens who are against bomb making in England, but the brutality used, in my self-professed genuine opinion is not even slightly different from Zimbabwean police. But do you even know of it, probably not because those who have appointed themselves providers of your knowledge have filtered it out. For your own good! For all the right reasons, their battering is less important than that of Zimbabweans, because Zimbabweans are more important to them, seeing they are not racists!?)  I have to say I spat my coffee all over my expensive computer monitor when I read that - sheer comic genious! Churchilian stuff - I'm sure Bob would be 'fighting them on the beaches' if indeed there were any ....

 

But let's suppose for a moment that Cde Gowans is indeed a serious soul, I would say he does raise some important questions about a range of economic and political interests in Zimbabwe - at least external capaitalist interest. The suggstion that they are rowing all in the same direction is a little far fetched,(In terms of fighting to protect the principles of property rights, which the capitalist system depends on to pacify the uprising of all the oppressed people. In protecting that logic they are one, because that logic is at the heart of western philosophy of society and human existence, since the ‘Enlightenment of the Social Contract.’) as is the notion that the indiginisation policies of ZANU-PF is a meaningful attempt to spread ownership to the masses -  Indeed, the problem is that Gowan's analysis (dare I call it that?) falls apart on the alter of ideological lunacy that suggests that the ruling party in Zimbabwe is a revolutionary(by any definition any attempt to reconfigure property ownership is revolutionary, simply on that account, without talking about its success or failure because the enclosure of property is far too old and the most protected area of our lives by the contemporary world and altering that would qualify for a revolution, but of course this is only correct if we are using the structuralist definition of revolution, which means changing the oppressor, not a more autonomous view of revolution which means destroying a system of oppression) one and that the neocons are desperate for its popularity to spread across the region and beyond, attacking the very heart of the capitlaist behemoth! I've always wondered whether ZANU-PF isn't a cunning plot by the imperialists (Useful contradictions and such are highly necessary for sustaining the fallacy of our independence from power) - given Bob the Builder's (that Cartoon character portrays a dominative structuralist view of life) penchant for Saville Row and Fortnums, i thought this was a dead giveaway - but what do I know? Indeed, what do I know?

 

Anyway, thanks for the light relief Mr Gowans - it's good to see that satire is alive and well in certain orbits.

 

Yours in the struggle for more revolutionary comedy!

A looting continua

Piers Pigou

[Declarator - born in Britain, of Hugenot descent (blasted Catholics!), emigrated to South Africa in early 90s -  I have lived 35 years of my life in southern africa as a deep cover agent recently activated by the neo-cons to mock Mr Gowans and his sixth columnist fellow travellers who I understand have themselves recently been activated after several years training in Albania at the Enver Hoxa Militia Training Camp for revolutionary nicompoops!]

 

Nkululeko Sibanda