Bolivia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe: In Alphabetical Order?

By Takura Zhangazha*

There was a little noticed story about Bolivia that was carried by the New York Times and ably analysed by investigative journalism online website The Intercept.  It turns out that the data on the disputed election that the Organization of American States (OAS) used to justify the claim of massive electoral fraud and therefore justify the undemocratic ouster of former president Evo Morales was flawed.  This, according to what the New York Times referred to as independent analysts. 

Investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, writing for the Intercept takes specific note of the role American mainstream media played in pushing the OAS’s now disputed data says, 

“In sum, when it came to the 2019 Bolivian coup, the U.S. media played its decades-old, standard role whenever the U.S. wants to depict a military coup against a government it dislikes as a victory for democracy: Namely, it blindly and dutifully adopted the State Department’s view and uncritically waved the flag.”

The right wing transitional government that was undemocratically put in power by the security services has so far failed to hold elections.  It has also ensured that it limits free expression, assembly and association particularly for Morales' indigenous supporters.

In Venezuela the same strategy however has not met with success.  Both from the very intention of imposing a president on the country after, again, disputed elections. And more recently in an attempted military raid to oust current leader Nicolas Maduro. 

Where we cross the Atlantic Ocean to another country in the global south, Zimbabwe, the same circumstances do not necessarily obtain. But they may be wished for.  Not only because of a recent mention by Mr. O’brien, national security adviser to US President Trump of Zimbabwe as an ‘adversary’.  But also as a result of evidently frosty diplomatic relations between Washington and Harare.

The key difference between Bolivia/Venezuela and Zimbabwe is that while the former’s regional bloc OAS is the USA’s priority regional sphere of influence, the latter’s equivalent in the form of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is a much different regional actor in international relations. Not that  SADC is invincible.  It is just a bit more historically and organically grounded than its OAS counterpart. 

This does not however stop a number of Zimbabweans from misconstruing political developments as they have occurred in either Bolivia or Venezuela as preferable.  Not only out of a general lack of knowledge of the histories of the two countries. Or out of evident ideological bias against leftist global south governments that do not pander to either neo-liberal foreign policy. As informed by what would likely be a falsely motivated idealization of neoliberal societies in the global north or east.  Moreso in the wake of a potentially new global understanding of the imperative for racial equality as motivated by what the African Union referred to as the ‘murder’ of George Floyd by police in the USA. 

In any event Zimbabwe’s current government is nowhere being as leftist as that previously led by Morales in Bolivia or the Venezuelan one that Maduro retains a hold on.  In fact, Mnangagwa’s government is decidedly neo-liberal with a keen eye of normalizing relations with the USA. It is however a strategy that appears, on the face of it, to not be working.  Much to the delight of the mainstream opposition which has deliberately positioned itself as the go to political leaders of the preferred interests of global capital.

It also appears to be that Mnangagwa is now probably mulling a tougher stance on what his national security council recently called, “Western governments through their local embassies”.  Apparently in a recently released statement for ‘peddling’ rumours of a military coup in the country. And probably therefore signifying a potentially significant shift in Mnangagwa's foreign policy strategy of ‘re-engagement’. 

Either way, the reality of the matter is that in Zimbabwe we must be careful what we wish for. Either side of the political divide.  There is limited little to envy about events as they have unfolded in Bolivia or Venezuela.  The key task is to understand their end effects on the majority poor of those countries. 

Just as we learnt of the devastating effects that liberal interventionism had on the stability and national cohesion of countries such as Libya, Somalia, Syria and Iraq among others.  For all the insistence on some sort of ‘responsibility to protect’ it is very evident that things have not panned out well in the immediate or the future for the aforementioned countries. 

In our various domestic political persuasions and agendas we will invariably require global allies in one form or the other. Historically, in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa, a greater majority of these have been from what during the Cold War was referred to as the ‘East’.  In the contemporary, these are now varied largely because we are naively living as though ideologically we have reached what would be an illusory ‘end of ideological’ history (as now somewhat rescinded by Fukuyama).

We would still do well to still embrace the Cabralist values of organic activism and its attendant intellectualism.  Which is that revolutions cannot be imported.  And that where we don’t seek to understand the full realities of our domestic realities, we will be unable to effectively navigate the turbulent waters that are the open and unpredictable ocean of international relations.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)