THE Western (and especially American) propaganda machine is now in full swing. It is now embedded within the inclusive Government of Zimbabwe.
The difference with Zimbabwe is that the US does not even need physical presence in the country. It has created "civil society groups" that do the donkey work and it maintains a wide network of humanitarian groups and/or non-governmental organisations to carry out that work.
The American brand of advertising, a multitrillion-dollar brand of mass consumerism, bolstered by cultural and military dominance and championed by worldwide symbols like Marlboro, McDonalds, Boeing, Coca-Cola and General Electric, is slowly hitting Zimbabwe through the MDC. This time the agenda is wider than just setting up corporations; but change in governance and returning "expropriated" land.
At election time we saw this brand of American public diplomacy employed in Zimbabwe. At first it was the big campaign bus by then leader of the opposition MDC and now Prime Minister, then came the NGO distribution of party leaflets, party regalia and other paraphenalia to "twist" people's minds.
The subliminal message in President Barack Obama's picture with Prime Minister Tsvangirai cannot be easily deciphered by the "naked eye". The rolling out of the red carpet by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel was an attempt at mass hypnosis that could normally achieve its intended effects if only Zimbabwe's literacy rate was not as high.
Zimbabweans have the ability to deconstruct the intended meaning in such images. They do not work in the Zimbabwean context. This global packaging of our PM, who naively falls for that trap all the time, tends to shoot the messenger, especially at home.
The zero sum approach of presenting PM Tsvangirai as a saint and President Mugabe as evil, does not augur well with the populace in Zimbabwe in particular and Africa in general. This approach does not work in a country whose freedom was brought by a protracted armed struggle and whose history of segregation and second class citizenship of the black population is still fresh.
The contrasts are presented in glittering generalities of freedom and democracy fighting evil and tyranny. However, reality on the ground is not as distinct.
The propaganda paper produced this week which featured PM Tsvangirai and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's pictures is a desperate attempt at mass hypnosis that will not work. For a PM who parades the world over saying the inclusive Government is working to then publish a "newspaper", pamphlet or whatever it is, to counter what he calls state media propaganda, is a sign of the general naivety that grips the MDC party.
To then have that pamphlet printed and didtributed bu USAid, especially after its recent bad news in Zimbabwe, is a sign of propaganda gone awry. Who is Tsvangirai fighting against? He is the "prime" minister and should be able to direct state media in ways helpful to the inclusive Government, otherwise his weaknesses as a premier are out there in the open.
Fortunately, our Zimbabwe audience knows that the reality of Zimbabwe is quite different from the rhetoric or these images advanced by the US and the EU.
It may be time for the US and EU to listen more to the legitimate grievances of the government of Zimbabwe; otherwise their messenger within the inclusive Government, Morgan Tsvangirai, might be playing with fire he will not be able to extinguish. He is dealing with experienced politicians who understand these issues deeply after eight or more decades of fightiing imperialist forces.
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Peter Chimutsa
peterchimutsa@yahoo.com 
