So here it is must I say this is going against my better judgement. (apologies if you've read this already but lord knows alot of people have so I might as well publish it)
I have to start by explaining that Zimbabwe has always been something of a bogey nation for me because believe it or not I was very nearly born there. Back in the early 1980's when both my sister and the country were in their infancy my dad, being a railwaymen, was offered a job in Zimbabwe to help upgrade their railway signalling system, an interesting offer when you consider that my dad was coming fresh of the back of helping to break the British railway unions.
As my sister was only about a year old this offer caused a big debate between my parents because on one hand they could accept and move to this hot, glamorous country where they would enjoy a well paid job and a high standard of living but on the other it would involve raising a young a hemisphere away from friends and family in a country which had just come out of a bloody civil war.
As these were events before my birth I can't really account for what happened but I get the impression that they'd pretty much decided to go for it when my mother discovered she was pregnant with yours truly (howdy!). This changed things and my mother put her foot down and decided that raising too toddlers in a foriegn country was a bit too much so my Dad took a job in Derby instead. When you think about it that was quite an odd decision because we didn't have any friends or family there either and at the time Derby was a die hard railway union town so you can imagine how popular my dad was there.
So if I was conceived a few months later I would probably have been born in Zimbabwe making me a fully fledged Zimbabwean citizen although Mugabe would have already revoked my citizenship but to talk to me about Zimbabwe is like asking what my life would be like if my life was totally different.
If that wasn't enough to make conversations about the country complicated enough in my household one of the aliases that the British Establishment uses to describe me is "Robert Mugabe" - not particularly charming but that's all part of the steady stream of abuse I've come to expect from them and let's be honest it's not as bad as some of the other things they call me such a rapist, paedophile and probably worst of all Heather McCartney.
Aside from giving me yet another reason to pretend Zimbabwe doesn't exist this label also served to give the real Robert Mugabe the slogan for his recent election campaign which was;
OUR LAND; OUR SOVEREIGN!
This meant that in the five months before the election the British Establishment's position to help unseat Mugabe was to actively campaign for him as part of their rather ferocious attack on me. This is an issue that has been of much discussion which for reasons of editorial coherence I will address later.
It was these five months of headlines along the lines of "British state attacks sovereign" which allowed Mugabe to produce such as strong showing at the recent election despite his countries apparent economic collapse.
This strong showing at the polls without any large scale fraud or voter intimidation produced a result that was so tight in the early days it was impossible to call one way or another with just 16,000 votes deciding the result.
This caused all the western intelligence agencies who were trying to rig the vote in Tsvangari's favour to panic and America, being America, decided to throw the kitchen sink at the problem and announce that Mugabe had conceded defeat and would be meeting the Tsvangari to discuss the transition of power. This is an old diplomatic trick which works because once the rumour has been started the subject, in this case Mugabe, is forced to confirm the rumour to be true and stand down or to deny the rumour which in this case would have put him in breach of electoral rules.
Mugabe being something of a shrewd operator took neither of these options and instead just ignored the rumour meaning that the MDC were left looking very silly the next day. At this point I can only assume panic had set in and they declared Tsvangari to have won the election.
This moved put them in clear breach of election rules and broke the back of the move to depose Mugabe.
It was at this point I became aware of what was going on and with Mugabe off the hook it became essential for the western diplomatic efforts to change tactics. Basically they then had two options.
1."Soft diplomacy" which was practiced by Mbeki the South African president. This involes being nice to Mugabe and gently talking him round to standing down.
2. "Hard diplomacy" which was practiced to a fault by Brown, the British Prime Minister. This involves threat, name calling, ultimatums and generally letting Mugabe know that if he didn't stand down he's be getting a slap.
In order to choose which strategy to go for first you need to consider the target and we know that Mugabe is an old warrior having being jailed by the British before going on to lead a guerrilla war against the Ian Smith regime. As a general rule you do not threaten old warriors because they do not scare.
We also know because of the Matabeland land massacre in 1982 and his response to the 2000 constitution defeat when Mugabe feels threatened he lashes out and Zimbabweans are beaten and killed, often in large numbers.
For these two reasons along with the fact you can always replace soft diplomacy with hard diplomacy but never the other way round if I was making the decision I would have gone with the soft option.
Britain however, whose position at the time could only be described as running with knives in the dark decided to go for hard diplomacy and go for it in big way issuing provocative statements against Mugabe, summoning the SADC in the hope of getting them to order Mugabe out of power and raising the issue in strong terms in front of the UN security council. All this bluster and thuggery crushed anyone else attempts at a more softly, softly approach and as they cranked up the rhetoric Mugabe started beating people - to date some 500 have been hospitalised and at least two have been murdered.
Now we are sitting in a situation where there can only be more bloodshed unless of course Mugabe does as he is perfectly legally entitled to do declares the MDC's pre-emption of the election result an act of treason, jails Tsvangari and holds an election run-off with only one name on the ballot.
To be honest the only people coming out of the whole state of affairs looking clever is Mbeki because he was right on the money from the start. It's just a shame that all the western pressure got the SA dockers union so wound up that they refused to unload that Chinese arms shipment because as everybody knows if the crates are on the ship they belong to the vendor, if they're on the docks they belong to the union. Now of course though all those lovely guns and some 800,000 rounds of ammunition are on their way to Angola which in case you didn't know used to have an AK-47 on their national flag.
Going back to the issue of Mr Mugabe's election slogan initially on April 2nd British Intelligence had no opinion on the issue but once they'd been given a few minutes to sit down and think about it they realised that a few pensions might be at risk and went straight into lie mode. Intially claiming that rather then being something Mugabe had picked up on himself it was in fact part of an elaborate plan to build Mugabe's confidence and ensure a smooth transition of power.
I then pointed out that in fact that was a stupid plan because;
1. My stated position as far back as September 2007 was that I would in no way shape or form assist them any further.
2. A plan that is dependent on my credibility is impossible to reconcile with a sustain, five month attack on my credibility.
3. When they rather helpfully stole my mail on Friday March 28th in order to prevent me receiving that benefit renewal form they also stole a magazine that would not only have let me know there was an election in Zimbabwe the next day it would also given me an detailed, accurate and impartial account of what exactly what was going on in that election.
Obviously because the first rule of British intelligence is to never own up when you've made a mistake their position then changed to that the were actually trying to slow down Mugabe's exit because they wanted more time to discuss the IMF Economic Structural Adjustment Plan. This is just nonsense because unless they are magically going to get the IMF to do business with Mugabe this is an issue that is best addressed after he has stood down.
So there you have it, British Intelligence, the gold standard! Excuse me while I don't ruch off to put my life in their hands.
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