Another cable describes Masiyiwa as an “unofficial MDC advisor.” The MDC, or Movement for Democratic Change, is the main opposition party in the country challenging the ruling socialist party.
MDC was formed as an offshoot of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), a partner of the National Endowment for Democracy’s Solidarity Center. The National Endowment for Democracy is an US-government funded NGO spun out of the Central Intelligence Agency which provides grants to political, media and civil society groups abroad as long as they further US foreign policy objectives.
Morgan Tsvangirai, an opposition figure once accused by the Zimbabwean government of plotting with the CIA to have Mugabe assassinated, left the ZCTU to lead the MDC.
The initial goal of the MDC was to use economic deprivation as a means of stirring up resentment against the ruling party and sparking a revolution. There was a small problem, though.
“Policies that are formulated on the basis of a Western conception that sanctions would work in predominantly agrarian countries such as Zimbabwe in the same way they would work in East Europe is misplaced,” Arthur Gwagwa of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“Unlike in urbanized societies, where sanctions might cajole people to protest and push for reforms, conditions are different in a country such as Zimbabwe where rural based populations have other livelihood means aside from bread, therefore the absence of bread in the shops will not prompt them to stage street protests,” Gwagwa said. “This was the MDC’s original plan that they are now backtracking on as they have realized that it doesn’t work.”
The Western plots to dislodge Mugabe’s ZANU-PF ultimately failed, and Masiyiwa wound up calling for an end to Western sanctions on Zimbabwe in 2018, several months before Mugabe’s death, commenting that “Zimbabwe has served its prison time.”
In the meantime, his influence flourished thanks to relationships with tycoons like Branson and Gates.
By Alexander Rubinstein for the Grayzone
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