OPINION: Those who ignore lessons from history are condemned to repeat the same mistakes made in the past.

While walking to our office from the train station recently with my Irish friend, we started discussing the military conflict between Georgia and Russia in South Ossetia.

My friend quickly pointed the finger of blame on the Americans and the Russians. I rebuked him for always seeing an American hand in any conflict.

He started to talk about the geopolitical forces operating at the tectonic plate level of this conflict.

He asked me to read a book by Noam Chomsky which he had given me nearly six months ago and which I had never read.

Well I went and read the book. Noam Chomsky says, quoting A J Muste who said, in 1941 when European countries were already locked in World War II and aggressions were escalating in Asia and the pacific, “The problem after any war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will ever teach him a lesson.”

Think about what happened after World War II, for a minute.

Chomsky is inferring that after the end of the war, the problem would now be the victors, America and Russia in this case, and not the defeated, Germany and Japan. 

Sure enough after the war the aggressors (Germany and Japan) had been silenced and were now peaceful and those that had been provoked to war (Russia and America) and were the victors became the new aggressors.

The cold war immediately started. The Korean war erupted in 1950 which was a proxy war between America and Russia fought over the Korean peninsula.

Then there was the Vietnam war and other conflicts until today where the hands of these victors were seen.

Muske was accurate in his prediction.

I would like to turn to our own doorstep, the Zimbabwean liberation war.

According to Muste the problem after a war is with the victor because he begins to think that war and violence pay. Who will ever teach him anything. The mindset of the victor becomes entrenched in the notion that coercion works and by applying a substantial force to your fellows you will get compliance.

The natural outcome from this is a habit to prefer force over peaceful means.

Those who will remember the liberation war in Zimbabwe in the late 1970s and the outbreak of conflict in Matebeleland and Midlands in 1982 will see remarkable similarities with what has just recently happened in the run-up to the June election.

In 2000 there was considerable violence when farms were invaded, people killed, houses and property burnt, farm equipment vandalised (no negotiation, no compensation, it was war!) and this followed after the defeat of the government in the constitutional referendum of early 2000.

More violence was to follow in the 2002 presidential elections and many people lost their lives.

In 2006, people had their houses and properties pulled down by bulldozers, children killed in the process. No negotiation, no compensation. It’s war time again.

Just a few months ago in 2008, business people had their goods forcibly confiscated from them in a warlike manner because they are overcharging (no negotiation, no compensation).

In the run-up to the re-run of the presidential election this year, war returned. We saw what probably can only be compared to what was happening during the liberation war and the Matebeleland conflict.

If you look deeper at all these “wars” against innocent citizens, there was a real or perceived problem or threat to the government which they wanted to solve. The default method of choice to solve these problems, “war”!

Why is there such a propensity to resort to such levels of violence? Why can’t anything be done in a peaceful negotiated way? Why is there a preference to use force rather than peaceful means?

The answer lies in Chomsky’s Theory. Those who win a war will always think that war and violence pay.

The root causes of all this violence are to be found in the fact that our government came to power after a violent conflict. They were the victors in a war and they came to power and got all that they got by means of war and violence. 

The natural outcome of this is a habit to prefer force over peaceful means.

To them violence and war pay. The chronology of events I have listed above is testimony to that belief. Every problem is viewed through a war lense.

Noam Chomsky is right.

Violence and war is the breath of our government. That is the tragedy that has become Zimbabwe. It all started very well, by winning a war. This is why we hear statements like “this country was won through the bullet and it cannot be taken by the pen”, or “we have degrees in violence”.

I will be quick to remind you that there is a spiritual dimension to all this. Because we have given way and allowed these spirits of war, violence and bloodshed to be seated in our midst, murder and death no longer mean much to those practising them. There are spiritual roots and powers that act behind all this violence and Zimbabwe needs to be freed from this.

This tendency to war and violence will have to be broken for there to be lasting peace in Zimbabwe and the MDC must be hailed for their continual insistence on peace. Only until peace wins the day will the mindset of those stuck in violence begin to change.

As a way of comparison, there were no fully-fledged wars fought in Zambia, Malawi, Botswana or even South Africa. Because there were negotiated settlements to end colonialism in some of these countries, they also tend to believe in negotiations and their tendency to violence is almost non-existent compared to the Armageddon that comes with Zimbabwean elections.

Thabo Mbeki comes from a background where negotiations won peace and that is why he believes in negotiations.

Our own government comes from a different background and that is why they have to be restrained by Mbeki to negotiate.