“Not every kind of trouble or problem someone has because of a girlfriend or a boyfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production,” Herbert Marcuse, a German-American philosopher and a bright mind of critical theory, famously said in his 1977 BBC interview. Marcuse passed away two years after the interview and didn’t live to see the birth of a new phenomenon on which one could blame the rest of the problems: the Global War Party and its local Georgian chapters – the United National Movement and a bunch of “rich” NGOs.
We can’t say much about the Global War Party or who they are. At this point, the imaginary organization could include anyone from Western hawks to Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney, who recently expressed support for Tbilisi’s Mziuri social cafe, which is facing closure after apparently falling out of favor with capital city authorities. As for the UNM, the long tally of the former ruling party’s sins was recently enriched by the early demise of eight innocent baobab trees. At least, that’s what the ruling Georgian Dream party and its talking heads would have us believe. And as the GD is firmly on the slippery slope of its irreversible spiral into irrationality, we can’t help but ask: is this good news or bad news?
Here is Nini and the Dispatch newsletter tracing the roots of dead trees to find the roots of all evil.
When Georgian Dream calls you “rootless,” you better be a tree: true, you still have little chance of survival, but at least you can count on redemption of sorts. “All eight baobabs have died,” the administration of the Shekvetili Dendrological Park, a seaside garden created by ruling party founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, said in a social media tantrum it threw on August 9.
The exotic park in Guria, western Georgia, has been open to the public since 2020, something the billionaire seems to believe the country should be more than grateful for. But Ivanishvili’s latest efforts to further enrich the park with eight baobabs from Africa seem to have sunk in deep waters: the trees succumbed to the stress of prolonged transportation from Kenya, the administration claims, placing the blame – surprisingly, yet somewhat predictably – on the UNM and Georgian “so-called” NGOs. “Because of their false reports and fake alarmist appeals, the process of transplanting the trees in full compliance with the law has been greatly delayed,” the park administration lamented.
No, the ruling party has not claimed (yet) it was voodoo. Instead, the complex UNM/NGO scheme allegedly included harassing Kenyan authorities with false reports and fake appeals and creating a “bureaucratic maelstrom.” In the end, the statement says – “justice prevailed in Africa” and the Kenyan courts dismissed the appeals, but it was too late: two years of odyssey in troubled waters must have taken their toll on giants of the savannah.
It has long been no secret that Ivanishvili is fond of nature—particularly the parts of it that he controls. Since he entered politics, much has been said and written about the exotic animals he keeps around him. And when, around 2016, giant trees were spotted floating around in the Black Sea to be transported to Shekvetili Park, we learned that the billionaire’s fascination extended to flora as well.
First, he came for the local trees. Giant plants were uprooted from the surrounding regions, often for solid compensation to the families whose orchards were affected, and transported in a complex and surreal process first to the sea and then by sea to the park. And when not a single attractive tree in Georgia’s coastal regions remained untouched, Ivanishvili developed the more global ambitions of a British museum and went to Africa to extract “trees of life” from Kenyan soil.
Trees of life (and death)
We first heard about Baobabgate from the reports about Kenyan environmental groups sounding the alarm about what they called “biopiracy.” Soon, Kenyan authorities suspended the transport permits. They eventually greenlighted the deal, but seven months after the trees arrived and were planted in Georgian soil, all eight baobabs were pronounced dead.
The news must have touched the ruling party founder deeply. His sensitivities about those trees were well known, especially after authorities appeared to block the screening of Taming the Garden, Salome Jashi’s famous documentary that followed Ivanishvili’s floating trees to explore the broader phenomenon of his power. Some have even theorized that the billionaire feels some spiritual connection to the long-living trees, possibly linking them to his personal chances of longevity. We certainly can’t verify these theories, but if they are true, it’s even harder not to feel sorry (for the trees, evidently).
And who can judge the reclusive billionaire? Isn’t it a basic human instinct to look for someone to blame when tragedy strikes? That’s exactly what happened: first came the angry statement from the park administration, and before long, pro-government journalists were hounding opposition figures with questions: did they feel responsible for these trees? The ruling party lineup readily echoed the accusations.
Georgians 1:0 Baobabs
But don’t worry. There are still seemingly bad things in Georgia that happen through no one’s direct fault. The baobab scandal comes on the anniversary of the Shovi landslide tragedy, a natural disaster that claimed dozens of lives. The authorities have completely washed their hands of it, despite the claims of expert groups that having the early warning system would have prevented the worst.
And days after the tree-killing allegations another tragedy rocked Georgia. An apartment fire claimed the lives of 6-year-old twins in Zugdidi, Samegrelo. The exact cause of the fire has not been determined, but a dominant theory is that a candle may have started it. The lone mother with four children had fallen on hard times and had gas and electricity supply cut. The children were home alone on the night of the tragedy as the mother reportedly went to scrape for some income. Many commentators are pointing to the state’s responsibility for the tragic incident, including leaving the vulnerable families in such miserable and unsafe conditions.
The government shrugged off the accusations, and some of its supporters even blamed the despondent mother. The sad contrast between launching a witch hunt over baobabs while dismissing human tragedies as mere accidents didn’t seem to bother these supporters either. Instead, they’ve been busy lashing out at critics for what they see as schadenfreude at the baobabs’ misfortune.
Well, this could not be further from the truth: no one can sympathize with the deceased baobabs better than an average Georgian citizen. If these trees, with a known lifespan of up to 2,500 years, could not withstand two years of stress from Georgian political eccentricities, imagine living under the same stress for two decades (or more).
And yet here we are, dead inside, but longing that one day our rulers will spiritually link their well-being to the well-being of their fellow citizens, rather than occult powers or – yes – trees.
