Monday, August 30, 2010

Iran — A friend indeed

The Herald
To all intents and purposes, whatever "hat" he might wear, whether as the Prime Minister or leader of the Western friend in the MDC as a Zimbabwean should see the friend that is in Iran.

By Tichaona Zindoga
IT was quite easy to view the recent meeting between Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and the Iranian ambassador here as one depicting the former as making an ironic "U-turn" four months after boycotting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he visited Zimbabwe.

The one temptation was to point to the uncomplimentary pronouncements that PM Tsvangirai’s MDC-T party levelled against the Middle East country, apart from snubbing the Iranian leader on three separate occasions of his excursion.

Tsvangirai neither welcomed the Iranian leader when he touched down at the Harare International Airport on April 23, nor turned up at the State dinner hosted in honour of the visiting leader by President Mugabe at State House.

He did not also attend the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair in Bulawayo where President Ahmedinejad officially opened the 51st edition of the premier exhibition.

Several MDC-T senior officials who had been part of the ZITF declared business elsewhere.

However, it was a different matter on Thursday as, according to a report, "Mr Tsvangirai wearing his PM’s hat — which he was supposed to wear during the ZITF — welcomed President Ahmadinejad’s chief envoy to Harare at his Munhumutapa office."

The report then cited: "The satire couldn’t have been clearer given that an ambassador represents his head of state and government, and Mr Tsvangirai was apparently lost to the irony."

Whatever the import of the supposed "U-turn" by the premier who reportedly told the Iranian envoy that the inclusive Government is a unified Government and working well, it is a good sign.

The beauty of it stems not only from the correction of the April childish and irrational snub, which seemed to derive from MDC-T’s friends in the West who have decided to view Iran as an "outpost of tyranny".

It will be noted though that Iran has proved to be a friendlier global player than its accusers who have attacked and pillaged less powerful countries in the name of democracy.

Both Zimbabwe and Iran are victims of Western meddling.

Tsvangirai’s latest move apparently is thankfully informed by Zimbabwe’s long-held view that this hospitable country needs friends not enemies, which President Mugabe repeated in July when he met an envoy from the hostile West.

Iran has been an important power, since the historic 1979 Islamic Revolution that threw out the American puppet regime.

The emerging giant, whose land area equals that of Britain, Germany, Spain and France combined, is irresistible for its being an energy superpower and its shining example in busting unjust Western sanctions.

The people of Iran have devised homegrown solutions in fully exploiting their natural resources and maximising on their competitive advantages and developing their science and technology capacity.

The result has been that Iranian industries such as petro-chemicals, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, military, automobile, textile, among others have been phenomenal homegrown successes.

Over the years when Zimbabwe has been constricted, restricted and sanctioned by the West and decided to look East, this same success of Iran has trickled to the country.

In fact, Zimbabwe’s co-operation with fellow Non- Aligned Movement member Iran whose three leaders have visited the country to date was etched in the 1991 Zimbabwe-Iran Joint Commission.

The sixth edition of the commission preceded President Ahmedinejad’s visit that saw Zimbabwe and Iran focusing on political, economic, commercial and cultural issues.

Several Memoranda of Understanding and agreements covering such areas as the abolition of diplomatic visas, science and technology, training, mining, agriculture, tourism, culture and health were signed.

Cumulatively the Zimbabwe-Iran Joint Commission has resulted in the two countries increasingly co-operating in the areas of mining, trade, technology transfer, agriculture, health, energy, aviation, education, water management, defence and broadcasting.

The historic ZITF at which Iranian companies took more than 200 square metres of exhibition space, occupied by 40 companies, making Iran the friendliest foreign country at the fair, highlighted the growing ties between the two countries.

The country’s leader became the first non-African to officially open the fair in Zimbabwe’s history.

During his Zimbabwe visit the Iranian leader officially launched the Industrial Development Corporation tractor project in Harare and toured textile concern Modzone Enterprises in Chitungwiza.

The two are joint Zimbabwe/Iran ventures.

With Iranian companies strongly represented at the just-ended Harare Agricultural Show, which Tsvangirai also visited, he must have left with a feeling of deja vu before he met Ambassador Pournajaf.

To all intents and purposes, whatever "hat" he might wear, whether as the Prime Minister or leader of the Western friend in the MDC as a Zimbabwean should see the friend that is in Iran.

To be a bit romantic, some political scientists have even pointed to the strong cultural ties that exist between Zimbabwe and Iran dating back to the 13th century when people in the two countries traded in ivory and gold.

Contacts with Europeans, by contrast, are dated to have started some 200 years later.

In this vein, when the premier wears his other "hat" he is not only being ahistorical but also unscientific, naïve and hypocritical.

One analyst has pointed out in an article the extent of such hypocrisy and double-dealing.

MDC senior leaders reportedly have as of March 2009 been meeting, seeking and receiving donations from the Iranian Embassy.

"Their leader Morgan Tsvangirai has held several meetings with the Iranian Ambassador Rasool Momeni since 2009 where not only has he sought financial assistance for his party, but he also indicated that the MDC looks forward to cultivating a symbiotic relationship with Iran," said the analyst.

On March 6 2009 the premeir held a meeting with Ambassador Momeni.

He indicated that the Government of Zimbabwe would like to pursue the MOUs it has over the years signed with the government of Iran, chief of these being the refurbishment of the Feruka Oil Refinery and the digitalisation at the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings.

The MDC-T-dominated town of Bindura benefited from the benevolence of the Iranian government and people, leading to the conferment of the freedom of the city on January 29 2010 to Ambassador Rassol Momeni.

Ms Thokozani Khupe, MDC-T vice-president and Deputy Prime Minister presided over the function.

Other examples of Iranian help include a US$1 000 donation to buy mealie-meal and cooking oil for distribution to his constituency extended to MDC Member of Parliament for Chikomba Central Moses Jiri by the Iranian Embassy.

Such exchanges were made in several other incidents involving the MDC-T.

In general terms, while Iran is not endowed with the Western megabucks, which have not been forthcoming as promised the MDC in particular and Zimbabweans in general, Iran has shown more than willingness to help Zimbabwe.

Where the others have wanted to see Zimbabwe "crash and burn", and perhaps sanitise that with "humanitarian" aid, Iran has co-operated with Zimbabwe in the same areas such as agriculture that the West wanted to see destroyed.

That the countries that Tsvangirai supports in his other "hat" represent a desperate and dying age of the empire is also a matter of fact, while emerging economies in the East and South represent the future.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Robert Mugabe: The great Pan-African, teacher

By supporting others in the region to gain their independence, he helped to spread assertion of that identity.
By economically empowering his people, he helped to guarantee continuity and the future of the redeemed African persona.
That was the underlying philosophy and teaching of Africa’s founding fathers.
The President is an African statesman that is why Africans love him.


The Herald

By Alexander Kanengoni
PRESIDENT Mugabe’s speech at the Sadc Heads of State and Government meeting in Windhoek, Namibia, last week was one of the finest he has ever made.

Suddenly, standing there in front of the Sadc Heads of State and Government, he was the teacher, just as it was a long time ago at Hope Fountain Mission, teaching them nationalism and politics.

He pleaded with them to safeguard our forefathers’ legacy, the land, because it was the inheritance that our founding fathers bequeathed us.

This writer couldn’t help imagining DRC’s Joseph Kabila shifting in his chair, holding his head in his hand because he knew it was Sadc, based on the principles laid down by our founding fathers that saved his country from descending into civil strife and chaos a few years ago.

He knew it was because of them that he was.

This writer could not help imagining Botswana’s Seretse Khama Ian Khama raising his eyebrows in his usual stoic manner, smiling wryly.

The prize that was being bestowed on eminent African personalities like Kenneth Kaunda and Brigadier Hashim Mbita were named after his father, Sir Seretse Khama, to recognise his sterling effort to help liberate Africa.

It was an occasion the likes of Bishop Desmond Tutu would be ashamed to be seen anywhere near.

Brigadier Mbita, the man from the OAU’s Liberation Committee in Dar es Salaam, this writer remembers him during our time training as guerrilla fighters in Tanzania.

He was still a colonel then.

He brought supplies to the camps and urged us to fight on for our independence.

Africa was speaking. And then KK. What more can one say about this founding father of African nationalism?

It was Ian Khama of all people, who would later call to suspend the infamous Sadc Tribunal where whites were rushing with their cases to get favourable judgments.

Our own judiciary built the legal framework for the implementation of the land reform programme.

Our white farmers took their case to the Tribunal and it nullified that framework!

The Sadc Tribunal made a ruling that superseded our own courts and declared the land reform programme illegal!

That is why this writer is constantly surprised by the naivety of some learned people among us who talk about the sanctity of the rule of law without looking at the people making such judgments and whose interests they are trying to protect.

How long will it be until they see?

President Mugabe then talked about regional co-operation.

He gave the example where a project in Zambia might require Sadc support and another in South Africa that might also require the bloc’s assistance.

And then in a disarming classroom fashion he appealed: "We do not have to do too many things at the same time. We do little by little by little . . ."

And once during the emotional and profound speech, he unconsciously slipped into Shona, as if he had forgotten it was Namibia and not Hope Fountain many years ago when he was still a classroom teacher.

My God, where would one go to find a better teacher?

There was something valedictory about the speech that tinged it with a bit of sadness. Wouldn’t there be another occasion for another finer speech?

Recently, this writer attended a journalists and writers meeting on xenophobia in Johannesburg.

A young journalist from the Pretoria News asked why the demonic picture they paint of Robert Mugabe in the papers was the opposite of the tumultuous reception and standing ovations the man gets each time he comes to South Africa.

The young man wanted to understand why.

Even before some of us eventually provided the answer, it was there written clearly on the walls that even the ordinary man in the street who gave him the tumultuous reception could see.

By leading the struggle to free his country, President Mugabe helped to redeem the African’s trodden past and identity.

By supporting others in the region to gain their independence, he helped to spread assertion of that identity.

By economically empowering his people, he helped to guarantee continuity and the future of the redeemed African persona.

That was the underlying philosophy and teaching of Africa’s founding fathers.

The President is an African statesman that is why Africans love him.

It is therefore not surprising that US president Barack Obama should describe Zimbabwe as a heartbreak as he said recently.

Wait a moment, heartbreak?

There is something romantic about the word it reminds some of us of those days as teenagers writing highly strung love letters to our girlfriends at other boarding schools around the country.

We used the word quite often then to describe the crazy little pain that we felt in our chests because we suspected the girls were double-crossing us.

Could Obama’s sentiment signal a softening of America’s heart towards Zimbabwe?

This writer thinks his sentimentality has a lot to do with his strong African connection.

Deep inside his heart, Obama must be ashamed America has no defence and justification to continue imposing sanctions on Zimbabwe.

There cannot be anything wrong with an African man seeking the empowerment of his people.

There cannot be anything wrong with an African man seeking the celebration of the African identity.

It was the message that permeated Africa’s liberation education.

It was the reason why we went to war. It is what Robert Mugabe has always stood for.

Many books have been written about Robert Mugabe.

The last decade has particularly seen an upsurge from white writers vilifying him.

Among other accusations, they say his policies are racist.

In fact, the judgment by the Sadc Tribunal regarding the farmers who took their case there was based on the premise that Zimbabwe’s land reform programme was motivated by hatred for the whites.

It is unfortunate that in anti-colonial Africa, it is the inevitable appearance the conflict takes.

That is how the fight ends looking like: black versus white.

But that is inevitable because the whites were our former colonisers.

It is their entrenched interests, for example, that the land reform programme sought to address.

There is nothing racist about our land reform programme.

It was the whites who had the land.

It is the same dishonesty they use that the advent of independence automatically eliminated racism and levelled the political and economic playing field.

We were then asked to accept the status quo because we finally had our man in State House and they described that as independence. What hogwash!

If they thought we fought the war just to have our man in State House while they continued to exclude us from their privileged position and participation in the economic mainstream, they were obviously wrong.

In South Africa at the moment, they are labelling affirmative action reverse racism.

It’s the highest form of dishonesty to imagine that someone who has just got the opportunity a few years ago could compete with another who has had the same opportunity for several centuries.

That was why Robert Mugabe ended taking the land by decree.

In that context, whites’ vilification of President Mugabe is understandable.

Indigenisation is not about taking away from the whites but sharing with them what they have.

As Minister Kasukuwere said last week, it is more about creating wealth.

Wealth already created is a finite resource.

Our future lies in untapped resources and tapping them.

As President said in Namibia, our diamonds should be mined by our own people and not by De Beers or Anglo-American.

That we should not allow our continued marginalisation from our own resources.

That we should create our own wealth and add value to our raw materials to create more wealth.

This was the political philosophy of Africa’s founding fathers.

There is nothing racist about sharing.

If I were honoured to write the story of the life of President Mugabe, this writer would tell the story of a withdrawn boy herding cattle in the veld in Zvimba.

I would tell the story of a studious young man poring over voluminous books in quest for knowledge.

I would tell the story of a bespectacled young African teacher in a pin-striped suit with combed hair slightly parted at the side of the head standing in front of a class at Hope Fountain.

I would tell the story of a suburban family man who loved to visit his old mother in rural Zvimba. I would talk of a father who loved his children, especially the last born.

I would tell the story of a man who sometimes received urgent calls to rush home to the village to settle burning family disputes.

I would tell the story of a man who manoeuvred skillfully to smoothen the strained relationship between his wife and his sisters, the age-old vatete-muroora rivalry.

I would tell the story of a man presiding over the marriage proceedings of his niece, often disagreeing with the girl’s father over the lobola, a figure that Robert considers is so low it’s like giving the girl away for free.

And right at the end of the story I would say, as if it was an after thought: By the way, this man is the President of Zimbabwe.

Of course, it is impossible to write such a story leaving out politics because the two are so intertwined in his life it is impossible to separate one from the other.

There is a painful African story that still haunts the people of Ghana.

It took them more than a decade to exhume the body of their founding father, Kwame Nkrumah, from Guinea to give it a befitting hero’s status and burial back home.

Of course, we shall not be forced to endure such embarrassment because we have learnt our lesson from such shameful experiences like that of the people of Ghana.

Robert Mugabe is a true African hero. But above all, he is an excellent teacher.

Repeal Act: US owns up on Zim Sanctions

The fact of the matter is that the US government has deployed a range of propagandists, both within and outside Zimbabwe, in a bid to link every problem in Zimbabwe to the alleged folly of redistributing land stolen by European settlers to the descendants of the original owners.

What's Left

By Stephen Gowans
THE received wisdom among Western governments, journalists and some concerned progressive scholars is that there have been no broad-based, economic sanctions imposed upon Zimbabwe.

Instead, in their view, there are only targeted sanctions, with limited effects, aimed at punishing President Robert Mugabe and the top leadership of the Zanu PF party.

The sanctions issue, they say, is a red herring Robert Mugabe and his supporters use to divert attention from the true cause of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown: redistribution of land from white commercial farmers to hundreds of thousands of indigenous families, a programme denigrated as "economic mismanagement".

Yet, it has always been clear to anyone willing to do a little digging that there are indeed broad-based economic sanctions against Zimbabwe; that there have been since 2001, when US president George W. Bush signed them into law; that they were imposed in response to Zimbabwe’s land reform program; and that Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown happened after sanctions were imposed, not before.

US sanctions, implemented under the US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, effectively block Zimbabwe’s access to debt relief and balance of payment support from international financial institutions. In addition, the EU and other Western countries have imposed their own sanctions.

On occasion, Mugabe’s detractors have been caught out in their deceptions about sanctions being targeted solely at a few highly-placed members of Zanu PF rather than the economy, and therefore Zimbabweans, as a whole.

At those times, they have countered that while sanctions may exist, they have had little impact, and anyway, they play into Mugabe’s hands. As progressive scholar Horace Campbell put it: "The Zimbabwe Government is very aware of the anti-imperialist and anti-racist sentiments among oppressed peoples and thus has deployed a range of propagandists inside and outside the country in a bid to link every problem in Zimbabwe to international sanctions by the EU and USA."

Campbell turns reality on its head. The fact of the matter is that the US government has deployed a range of propagandists, both within and outside Zimbabwe, in a bid to link every problem in Zimbabwe to the alleged folly of redistributing land stolen by European settlers to the descendants of the original owners.

Campbell’s argument echoes similar sophistry used to excuse the US blockade on Cuba. Economic sanctions on Cuba, the Castros’ detractors argue, have had little impact on the island’s economy, and are used by the Cuban government to falsely link its economic difficulties to US economic warfare.

The Castros, they say, stay in power by diverting attention from their own mismanagement and laying blame for their country’s economic problems at Washington’s doorstep.

That this argument holds no water is evidenced by the reality that Washington could easily deprive the Cuban communists of their alleged diversionary tactics by lifting the sanctions, but chooses not to.

The idea that power-hungry leaders exploit mild sanctions as a dishonest manoeuvre to disguise their failings is insupportable. Far from having little impact, economic sanctions devastate economies; that’s their purpose.

Denying the role they play in ruining economies is tantamount to denying that dropping napalm on villages creates wastelands. John Mueller and Karl Mueller pointed out in a famous 1999 article titled "Sanctions of Mass Destruction" — it appeared in the May/June 1999 issue of the uber-establishment journal Foreign Affairs — that: ‘‘…the big countries have at their disposal a credible, inexpensive, and potent weapon for use against small and medium-sized foes.

"The dominant powers have shown that they can inflict enormous pain at remarkably little cost to themselves or the global economy. Indeed, in a matter of months or years whole economies can be devastated…’’

The improbable idea that sanctions have little impact invites the question: If they make little difference, why do Western governments deploy them so often?

Supporters of the view that sanctions are minor inconveniences that punish a few powerful leaders, who then exploit them to draw attention away from their own economic management, expect us to believe that the leaders of major powers are simpletons who devise ineffective sanctions policies — and that they persist despite their sanctions playing into the hands of the sanctions’ targets.

If the sanctions supporters’ laughable logic and the reality that US sanction legislation is on the public record for all to see weren’t enough, legislation brought forward by US Senator Jim Inhofe ought to lay to rest the deception that sanctions haven’t torpedoed Zimbabwe’s economy.

The title of Inhofe’s bill, the Zimbabwe Sanctions Repeal Act of 2010, makes clear that sanctions have indeed been imposed on Zimbabwe and have had deleterious effects.

According to the bill, now that the Western-backed Movement for Democratic Change holds senior positions in Zimbabwe’s power-sharing government, US sanctions against Zimbabwe need to be repealed "in order to restore fully the economy of Zimbabwe".

In other words, sanctions are preventing Zimbabwe’s economy from flourishing — the same point Mugabe has been making for years, cynically say his critics.

Yet, while the implication of Inhofe’s bill is that sanctions have undermined Zimbabwe’s economy (otherwise, why would economic recovery require their repeal?)

Inhofe tries to disguise the role US sanctions originally played in creating an economic catastrophe in Zimbabwe, arguing that the sanctions were imposed only after Mugabe allegedly turned Zimbabwe into a basket case by democratising patterns of land ownership.

But it makes more sense to say that sanctions ruined the economy. After all, the purpose of economic sanctions is to wreak economic havoc. And what would be the point of trying to devastate Zimbabwe’s economy after Mugabe had allegedly already ruined it?

Finally, in pressing for the repeal of sanctions to allow for economic recovery, Inhofe acknowledges that the sanctions do indeed have crippling consequences.

Inhofe may be able to argue (improbably) that the sanctions were imposed to punish Zimbabwe for Harare’s economic mismanagement (which would mean that Washington expected Zimbabweans to suffer an additional blow on top of the one already meted out by Harare’s alleged mismanagement — a pointless cruelty, if true); but he can’t argue that the sanctions didn’t undermine the country’s economy: his bill acknowledges this very point

Finally, the fact that Inhofe’s legislation seeks repeal of the sanctions because the MDC holds key positions in the Zimbabwean government reveals that the MDC, as much as sanctions, is an instrument of US foreign policy.

Sanctions were rolled out in response to land redistribution with the aim of crippling the economy so that the ensuing economic chaos could be attributed to land reform itself.

With MDC members brought into a power-sharing government in key posts, it has become necessary in the view of Inhofe and others that sanctions be lifted to allow an economic recovery.

If the bill is ratified and signed into law, the ensuing recovery will be attributed to the efforts of the MDC cabinet members, an attribution that that will be just as misleading as linking the destructive effects of sanctions to Zanu-PF’s efforts to fulfil the land redistribution aspirations of the national liberation struggle.

The major part of Zimbabwe’s economic troubles — and a large part of the prospects for economic recovery — are sanctions-related.

Monday, August 23, 2010

New Evidence Shows U.S. Role in killing Patrice Lumumba

There can no longer be any doubt that the U.S., Belgian and Congolese governments shared major responsibility for the assassination of Lumumba in Katanga. The young prime minister was an imperfect leader during an unprecedented and overwhelming international crisis. But he continues to be honored around the world because he incarnated – if only for a moment – the nationalist and democratic struggle of the entire African continent against a recalcitrant West.

Allafrica.com

By Stephen R. Weissman
Fifty years ago, the former Belgian Congo received its independence under the democratically elected government of former prime minister Patrice Lumumba. Less than seven months later, Lumumba and two colleagues were, in the contemporary idiom, "rendered" to their Belgian-backed secessionist enemies, who tortured them before putting them before a firing squad. The Congo would not hold another democratic election for 46 years. In 2002, following an extensive parliamentary inquiry, the Belgian government assumed a portion of responsibility for Lumumba's murder.
But controversy has continued to swirl over allegations of U.S. government responsibility, as the reception for Raoul Peck's acclaimed film, "Lumumba," demonstrated. After all, the U.S. had at least as much, if not more, influence in the Congolese capital as Belgium. It was the major financier and political supporter of the U.N. peacekeeping force that controlled most of the country. According to still classified documents that I first revealed eight years ago, members of the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) "Project Wizard" covert action program dominated the post-Lumumba Congolese regime. However, a 1975 U.S. Senate investigation of alleged CIA assassinations concluded that while the CIA had earlier plotted to murder Lumumba, he was eventually killed "by Congolese rivals. It does not appear from the evidence that the United States was in any way involved in the killing."
It is now clear that conclusion was wrong. A new analysis of the declassified files of the Senate "Church" Committee (chaired by Democratic Senator Frank Church), CIA and State Department, along with memoirs and interviews of U.S. and Belgian covert operators, establishes that CIA Station Chief Larry Devlin was consulted by his Congolese government "cooperators" about the transfer of Lumumba to sworn enemies, had no objection to it and withheld knowledge from Washington of the impending move, forestalling the strong possibility that the State Department would have intervened to try to save Lumumba. I detail this evidence in a new article in the academic journal, Intelligence and National Security, vol. 25, no. 2
Here, briefly, are the most important new findings:
- Former U.S. officials who knew Lumumba now acknowledge that the administration of former president Dwight D. Eisenhower mistakenly cast him as a dangerous vehicle of Soviet influence.
- Covert CIA actions against the Lumumba government, often dovetailing with Belgian ones, culminated in Colonel Joseph Mobutu's military coup, which was "arranged and supported and indeed managed" by the CIA alone, according to Devlin's private interview with the Church Committee staff.
- The CIA station and U.S. embassy provided their inexperienced and politically weak Congolese protégés with a steady stream of political and military recommendations. The advice arrived both before Congolese government decisions and shortly afterwards when foreign advisers were invited in to offer feedback. Devlin's counsel was largely heeded on critical matters, especially when it came to Lumumba. Thus Mobutu and former president Joseph Kasavubu were persuaded to resist political pressures to reconcile with Lumumba, and Mobutu reluctantly acceded to Devlin's request to arrest him. After both Devlin and the American ambassador intervened, the government dropped its plan to attack U.N. troops guarding Lumumba. And after Lumumba was publicly brutalized by Mobutu's troops, the U.S. embassy – under pressure from the State Department, which was concerned about African governments' threats to pull out of the U.N. force – pushed Kasavubu into promising Lumumba "humane treatment" and a "fair trial."
- In this context of U.S. adviser-Congolese leader interactions, Devlin's decision not to intervene after he was informed by a "government leader" of a plan to send Lumumba to his "sworn enemy" signaled that he had no objection to the government's course. It was also seen that way by Devlin's Belgian counterpart, Colonel Louis Marliere, who later wrote, "There was a 'consensus' and …no adviser, whether he be Belgian or American, thought to dissuade them." Considering Congolese leaders' previous responsiveness to CIA and U.S. embassy views, Devlin's permissive attitude was undoubtedly a major factor in the government final action. (Its last-minute switch of sending Lumumba to murderous secessionists in Katanga instead of murderous secessionists in South Kasai does not change the crucial fact that Devlin gave a green light to delivering Lumumba to men who had publicly vowed to kill him.)
- Furthermore, shortly before the transfer, Mobutu indicated to Devlin that Lumumba "might be executed," according to a Church Committee interview. Devlin did not suggest that he offered any objection or caution.
- Cables show that Devlin did not report to Washington the impending rendition for three days (i.e. until it was already underway), forestalling the strong possibility that the State Department would have intervened to try and protect Lumumba as it had done several weeks earlier. When news came that Lumumba had been flown to Belgian-supported Katanga (but before it became known that he was already dead), a top State Department official called in the Belgian ambassador to complain about Belgian advisers' possible contribution to the Congolese government's "gaffe" and to insist upon the need for "humane treatment."
- The Church Committee failed to uncover the full truth about the U.S. role because of its inattention to the covert relationship between the CIA and Congolese decision makers, CIA delays in providing key cables, and political pressure to water down its original draft conclusions.
Devlin died in 2008 after consistently denying any knowledge of his Congolese associates' "true plans" for Lumumba, and maintaining that he had "stalled" the earlier CIA assassination plot. Yet declassified CIA cables disprove his claims.
One horrible crime cannot, by itself, change history. But the murder of Patrice Lumumba, the most dynamic political leader the Congo has ever produced, was a critical step in the consolidation of an oppressive regime. At the same time, it crystallized an eventual 35-year U.S. commitment to the perpetuation of that regime, not just against Lumumba's followers but against all comers. In the end, Mobutu's kleptocracy would tear civil society apart, destroy the state and help pave the way for a regional war that would kill millions of people.
Relevant Links
There can no longer be any doubt that the U.S., Belgian and Congolese governments shared major responsibility for the assassination of Lumumba in Katanga. The young prime minister was an imperfect leader during an unprecedented and overwhelming international crisis. But he continues to be honored around the world because he incarnated – if only for a moment – the nationalist and democratic struggle of the entire African continent against a recalcitrant West.
If the U.S. government at last publicly acknowledged – and apologized for – its role in this momentous assassination, it would also be communicating its support for the universal principles Lumumba embodied. What better person to take this step than the American president, himself a son of Africa?
Stephen R. Weissman is author of "An Extraordinary Rendition," in Intelligence and National Security, v.25, no.2 (April 2010) and American Foreign Policy in the Congo 1960-1964. He is a former Staff Director of the U.S. House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Africa.
AllAfrica.com

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Obama’s broken heart: The real cause

The principle of "what we say goes" was rubbished by Zimbabwe’s revolutionary land reclamation programme of 2000, and George Bush Junior tried in vain alongside Tony Blair to stop the process.

The Herald

By Reason Wafawarova

ON August 3, US President Barrack Obama was hosting what Washington called "Young African Leaders" and what captured media attention the most for this overly inflated non-event was what Obama had to say about one small Southern African country that is causing the entire West sleepless nights, Zimbabwe.

This is what Obama said: "I’ll be honest with you; I am heartbroken when I see what has happened in Zimbabwe . . . Mugabe is an example of a leader who came in as a liberation fighter and — I’m just going to be very blunt — I do not see him serving his people well."

Barrack Obama has shown very little more than a celebrated "black man" just too happy and satisfied to be the United States President — all for the historical significance of it, and nothing more.

On November 18, 2009, Obama publicly admitted that he had failed to close the notorious US torture base, Guantanamo Bay, saying it was "technically difficult" to do so.

This is despite the fact that on January 21, 2009, a day after he assumed the US presidency, Obama’s first signature was appended to a directive for the closure of Guantanamo by January 2010.

His directive and signature were both dismissed as child play by those who hold real power in American politics and nothing the matter has since happened to the US torture base.

If Barrack Obama had a heart that could break, it must be broken over his failures to close Guantanamo, to pull out US troops from Iraq, let alone stop the war there, and his dismal failure to defeat the resolute Taliban in Afghanistan, another needless bully war of occupation.

He also has the massive BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill to break his heart over, especially considering that nothing more than watching has happened with this disaster.

What Obama did not tell his listeners, or more precisely his rented crowd of young Africans, was what exactly "has happened in Zimbabwe".

He did not tell the young Africans what has happened in Zimbabwe is defiance of Western hegemony, a defiance of US political benchmarks, and a thwarting of the imperial goals over which he presides as president.

In February 1991, George Bush Senior made a very revealing statement about the US foreign policy and Washington’s idea of world order.

It was towards the end of the first Gulf War, when he said proudly that there is a "new world order" that the US is establishing and the main principle of this new world order is "what we say goes".

The principle of "what we say goes" was rubbished by Zimbabwe’s revolutionary land reclamation programme of 2000, and George Bush Junior tried in vain alongside Tony Blair to stop the process.

Recently the United States, Canada and Australia tried to stop Zimbabwe from selling her diamonds from Chiadzwa by trying to abuse the Kimberly Certification Scheme and Zimbabwe simply threatened to flood the market with diamonds outside the Kimberly process and the threat made the United States climb down and accept the Kimberly certification of Zimbabwean diamonds.

Even the 2003 invasion of Iraq did not work out quite as expected, not as effectively as the first invasion. Bush Junior, Colin Powell and others made it very clear to the United Nations that either they could go along with the US plans to invade Iraq or they would be, as it was put, "irrelevant".

It was put even more brazenly by Washington’s UN ambassador John Bolton who simply said: "There is no United Nations".

So when the US chooses to have the UN’s acquiescence, then the world body can go along with the world’s leading superpower. Otherwise the United Nations simply does not exist. This is the principle of "what we say goes".

Of course, the invasion of Iraq was undertaken against overwhelming international opposition. There were international polls taken and outside Israel and India, there was practically undetectable support.

The support did not go over 10 percent anywhere in Europe but the principle of "what we say goes" still prevailed. The US marched into Iraq with the UK, Australia and a few others in tow; regardless of massive resistance from the majority of the people in each of the countries that took part in that invasion.

Some people attributed the stance to the personal arrogance of George W. Bush and they said only him could be capable of such crass extremism. While Bush was most certainly a nasty character in a class of his own, the reality is the invasion of Iraq was not an unusual occurrence in the world of Western hegemonic affairs and in the politics of imperialism.

The invasion is understandable on the part of a superpower that has overwhelming military force, incomparable security measures, a huge economic base, and barely any rivals in the world.

So Iraq had no Soviet Union to stop its invasion and the US did as they wished in the absence of the traditional Cold War threat.

But even after the invasion, the US could not exactly do a "what we say goes" as the Iraq insurgents came after the occupiers with the determination of a people that fully understood the gravity of their humiliation and oppression. They managed to kill an estimated 5 000 US soldiers and the Americans have been stuck in that war since 2003.

This is the kind of business that breaks the hearts of US presidents and this is exactly what has broken the heart of Obama — the defiance by lesser people to the "what we say goes" doctrine. Zimbabwe stands guilty of failing to do the will of the empire, and US ambassador Charles Ray got the true vibe of Zimbabwean defiance when President Mugabe declared that Obama and his Chicago Boys can as well "go to hell" where there is more hope of achievement than trying to determine the affairs of Zimbabwe.

The major part of the US war in Vietnam was waged against South Vietnam and North Vietnam was more of a sideshow.

However, the protests within and outside the US were largely about North Vietnam, even from the majority members of the peace movement.

Declassified Pentagon documents show that the bombing of North Vietnam was planned in meticulous detail, where to bomb, where to spare and when to do what.

There is nothing in those documents about the bombing of South Vietnam, as Noam Chomsky noted at a lecture at Lexington, Massachusetts

African Heroes of Zim’s gems story

Consequently, the support Zimbabwe has enjoyed from non-Western countries stems from its just cause and also the common identification of not only the other’s justness
but also the common denominator of fighting the evil West.

The Herald

By Tichaona Zindoga

ON paper, the recent sale of Zimbabwe’s stockpiled Chiadzwa diamonds through the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme can be said to have lacked the drama and heroism or pseudo-heroism that characterised the countrys protracted battle to get the nod from the Eurocentric-compromised watchdog, .

Zimbabwe has been constantly under siege from Western countries who have been barring the legitimate exploitation and sale of diamonds from the eastern part of the country since Government moved to stem illegal activities and regularise mining in the area following the discovery of the mineral in 2006.

What generally followed the August 11 certification and sale of 900 000 carats, worth US$72 million, was something between a sense of vindication on Zimbabwe’s part and the grudging announcements by the Western and affiliated media of the development and futile attempts to ratchet up the discredited "blood diamonds" tag on Zimbabwe’s gems.

Interestingly, only recently, the person of one Farai Maguwu, being described as a "diamond" or "human rights" activist had been celebrated in Western capitals for his role in criminalising and bloodying Zimbabwe’s gems, a supposedly meritorious role in the context of the KP’s principles.

(The KP is a group of governments, human rights organisations and diamond industry formed in 2003 to stem the flow of "conflict" or "blood" diamonds financing rebel wars.)

After Maguwu was arrested for allegedly peddling prejudicial information to KP monitor Mr Abbey Chikane, groups and countries in the US, Canada, Australia and the Euorpean Union and groups they sponsor, went overdrive and attempted to make a martyr of him.

His was the coup of a KP meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel, in June at which the anti-Zimbabwe members of the consensus-seeking body led to an inconclusive ending to the meeting on top of seeking to redefine "blood" diamonds to include those from Zimbabwe.

But then came the World Diamond Council July meeting in St Petersburg, in Russia, which granted Zimbabwe the right to export its Chiadzwa diamonds.

The meeting set conditions for the sale of the gems, which was followed by the recent certification and sale, to be followed by another in September.

If there is a compelling need to make heroes, in the fashion of the villainous Maguwu (or Newman Chiadzwa, that villainous "diamond chief") and the foreign legion then there is generally to be a strong recognition of the efforts of Abbey Chikane and the African diamond producers.

This might also include the other progressive world forces that make the majority of 75-member KP and the Zimbabwe Government’s commitment to the process, which led Mines Minister Obert Mpofu to declare that "we have nothing to hide".

The one urge to point to the person of South African Chikane is a strong one.

After two monitoring and fact-finding missions to Zimbabwe, Chikane bravely gave the country’s gems a clean bill of health, and in the process playing a huge part in the unprecedented split in the KP as seen in Tel Aviv as he contradicted the demands of the powerful Western lobby.

For a moment, the West and their civil society lobbyists forgot his distinguished standing as a professional, businessman and founding chair of the KP — and how his involvement in Zimbabwe came about, which is subject for discussion below.

Interestingly, his actions have also not been without question in Zimbabwe, especially when he was seen to have been influenced by Zimbabwe’s detractors during one of his itineraries.

But on August 11 Chikane said he had striven to ensure that Zimbabwe qualified for certification, which of course entailed him pointing out both the strenths and weaknesses of the Zimbabwean system until the country attained the "minimum" requirements.

"Throughout my visits," he related, "I have spent a lot of time on how Zimbabwe can qualify for certification."

Chikane is none other than the product of the November 2009 Swakopmund (Namibia) KP Plenary in which he was appointed monitor to Zimbabwe under the Joint Work Plan.

He was tasked with addressing "the indications of serious non-compliance with KP’s minimum requirements" identified in July 2009 when Zimbabwe’s diamonds exports had been suspended.

A middle-ground product of mainly African parties that wanted to see progress in Zimbabwe and a Western lobby that wanted Zimbabwe booted out altogether he was to see to it that Zimbabwe honoured its commitments to ensure diamond mining in the Marange area in full compliance with the KP.

His role involved liaising with the government in assessing implementation of the Joint Work Plan and report the same to the Kimberley Process.

He would also be involved in the process of supervising exports of Marange diamonds in compliance with KP minimum requirements.

Unfortunately, it was within the discharge of this mandate, including on August 11, that he faced severe challenges, including the ignominy of having his professional integrity being questioned some motley opposition bands who are mere observers at the KP.

It was within this mandate that he also witnessed, undoubtedly with utmost disgust, puerile efforts to bend the rules and change working definitions at intersessionary meetings and apply non-existent rules against Zimbabwe.

But KP’s fiasco cannot also be delineated from the geopolitics that has characterised Zimbabwe and the world over the past decade.

In which case, the hounding of Zimbabwe at KP by Western countries in the EU, America, Canada, and Australia is but an extension of the destructive engagement they have wrought since Zimbabwe decided to empower her people through the land reform programme.

Historically, the same forces have in the past centuries visited appalling economic, social and political abuses upon the "lesser peoples" of the African and Asian worlds.

The current unipolar world dominated by the West has sought to entrench the same abuses.

Consequently, the support Zimbabwe has enjoyed from non-Western countries stems from its just cause and also the common identification of not only the other’s justness but also the common denominator of fighting the evil West.

The particular support of African nations has been invaluable. The drafting of the decisive Swakopmund Joint Work Plan in the revolutionary country of Namibia and the subsequent appointment of Chikane is one major point.

The second is the support at both Tel Aviv and St Petersburg.

It was at St Petersburg that African countries, led by diamond rich Namibia, threatened to leave the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme if Zimbabwe was not allowed to market its diamonds freely.

This forced the KP into the two-batch sale decision on Zimbabwe.

As expected, Western countries in the KP had wanted to block Zimbabwe’s certification despite Chikane’s favourable report on Zimbabwe.

The fact that African countries are in fact the largest diamond producers in the world, accounting for some 61 percent, makes their solidarity with Zimbabwe which is said to be able to contribute about a quarter of the world’s gems a matter of course and virtue.

The African Diamond Council’s recent assurance of the organisation’s support of Zimbabwe in spite of Western attempts ty bloody the country's gems is in order.

ADC has said that Zimbabwe’s membership in the African Diamond Council "is incessant and was never in jeopardy despite interminable demands from the Kimberley Process, the World Diamond Council, the World Federation of Diamond Bourses and the US Department of State".

The ADC had previously advised Zimbabwe to preclude any intercession coming from Western-based diamond establishments and organisations interested in preventing the sale of Zimbabwean diamonds on the world market.

The organisation had also designated members of its intergovernmental branch, the African Diamond Producers’ Association to travel Marange mining area on a fact-finding mission recently.

The delegation in question comprised of representatives from South Africa, DRC, Angola, Sierra Leone and Mauritania and copincided with certificatiuon of Zimbabwe diamonds.

It coincided with another comprising of Liberia, Australia, Brazil, Ghana, India and Namibia.

The dominance of African players no doubt led to the strongly African motif at the certification ceremony on August 11.

It was a due honour to African heroes of Zimbabwe’s diamond struggle

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Zimbabwe: the hotbed of African emancipation

Today, Zimbabwe is divided politically between supporters of the party that has among its membership the surviving heroes of the liberation struggle, and is the vanguard of the gains of the liberation struggle, Zanu-PF, and those who support a new generation of politicians who today proudly partner neo-colonial governments in Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Holland and the United States — countries that authored slavery, colonialism and imperialism in Africa.
Wafawarova Writes

By Reason Wafawarova
TODAY, Zimbabwe is a hotbed of the emancipation struggle. This struggle is between those who have for many years been exploiting Africa’s natural resources and using the people of this continent as their tools and as their slaves; and those Zimbabweans who, after realising their weakness and exploitation, decided to take up arms against white colonial settlers in order to liberate, not only their generation but all the future generations of this country.
These are the people we count as national heroes today and they make the foundations of this great nation, the Rock House, or Zimbabwe.
Theirs was not only a bitter liberation struggle, but it is a continuing struggle towards total empowerment of the black Zimbabwean: at times it is a silent struggle, occasionally it explodes like gunpowder, as we saw with the land reclamation revolution, and at times the successes and gains achieved by the people slip away.
However, the resolve is a matter of principle and it will never slip away.
This is not only the history of Zimbabwe, but also that of Africa since 1956 when African states began to obtain flag independence. Since that year many legitimate African governments have been forcefully toppled and new governments established, popular leaders were assassinated in broad day light and replaced by pliant puppets of the West, from the rise of Joseph Mobutu in Congo at the expense of the murdered revolutionary, Patrice Lumumba, the rise of puppet–turned rebel (against British masters) Idi Amin in Uganda at the expense of the deposed socialist Milton Obote, all the way to the rise of Blaise Compaore in Burkina Faso at the expense of the brutally murdered and morally upright revolutionary Thomas Sankara.
Today, Zimbabwe is divided politically between supporters of the party that has among its membership the surviving heroes of the liberation struggle, and is the vanguard of the gains of the liberation struggle, Zanu-PF, and those who support a new generation of politicians who today proudly partner neo-colonial governments in Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Holland and the United States — countries that authored slavery, colonialism and imperialism in Africa.
These are a new crop of politicians who prefer to call themselves "pro-democracy" cadres, and they belong to the MDC political factions, mainly the one led by Morgan Tsvangirai, MDC-T.
In Zimbabwe, the broader perception of the political spectrum is that of sovereignty and patriotism on the part of Zanu-PF and human rights covered treachery on the part of the MDC-T in particular.
Nathaniel Manheru explained well these political dynamics in his incisive Saturday piece last week and this writer will not dwell much on it.
The role and duty of Zanu-PF is to spell out the aims of the Zimbabwean and the African Revolution, and to identify the enemies thereof, in order to set up policies and strategies which will ensure that the revolution is safeguarded and consolidated.
This is no mean role, and the call to defend this revolution is no child’s play, but wrestling against mighty principalities and powers.
The MDC-T specifically prides itself in the Western-sponsored role of promoting civil and political rights, and they believe that the liberation and emancipation of Zimbabwe in that regard can be achieved through funding from the West, the same way the armed struggle for independence was supported by Russia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and China.
The MDC-T agenda in politics is not the subject matter of this essay, suffice to say it is an agenda that rests on and scoffs at the blood of assassinated and murdered African heroes like Chris Hani, Thomas Sankara, Patrice Lumumba, Samora Machel, Herbert Chitepo and many others. In the context of the legacy of the fall of colonial empires in Africa, quisling political parties like the MDC-T are a very sad story.
This essay is about interrogating Zanu-PF’s guidelines on guarding, consolidating and advancing the revolution of Zimbabwe.
The Tanzania African National Union, a sister liberation movement to Zanu-PF, noted in 1972 that "revolutions are quick social changes, changes which wrest from the minority the power they exploited for their own benefit (and that of external exploiters), and put it in the hands of the majority so that they can promote their own wellbeing."
This is the principal guideline that Zanu-PF should always observe. The majority must have an opportunity to promote their own wellbeing. Zanu-PF has not fared too badly in wrestling power from colonial minorities, but the party cannot honestly boast of having succeeded as much in handing over that power to the majority.
The opposite of a revolution is a counterrevolution: that is, quick and sudden changes which wrest power from the majority and hand it over to a minority with the aim of stopping the progress of the masses. This minority could be made up colonially, racially, ethnically or politically — it really makes no difference.
The greatest aim of the African revolution is to liberate the African, just like the greatest aim of the Zimbabwean revolution is to liberate the Zimbabwean.
This kind of liberation is not sent from heaven, it is achieved by combating exploitation, imperialism and neo-colonialism. Nor is liberation brought by specialists or experts. It is the majority of the masses that is being humiliated, robbed, exploited and oppressed who are the experts and specialists for this kind of liberation.
This is why land reclamation was best executed by the masses of Zimbabwe, and not by some land specialists and experts from the world’s renowned universities.
There is no nation in the world that can teach Africans how to liberate themselves. Like TANU realised back in 1972, Zanu-PF must continue to realise that the duty of liberating ourselves as black Africans lies with us, and that the necessary expertise will always emerge during the course of the struggle itself.
Gordon Brown was recently in Uganda calling himself a "community leader" after disgracefully losing his political leadership of the UK earlier in the year. He intimated his desire to see Africa play a central role in shaping the economic affairs of the world, and he also said Britain and other Western countries must help Africa realise its central role as a vastly resourced continent.
That must have been good news to liberalists and those who associate freedom and democracy with Westernisation. However, it is perilous for Africans to expect or hope for the West to help our continent move into a central role in the running of economic affairs in the world.
We have diamonds in Africa and the diamond industry is estimated at US$30 billion, US$8 billion of which lies in the extraction of the gems. The rest lies in processed diamonds. The West will assist Africa to be experts at extracting these diamonds, while they retain the monopoly of cutting and processing the same diamonds.
How then does Africa become central to the diamond industry while controlling only 14 percent of that industry — regardless of having a monopoly over the diamond resource itself?
The reality of the African situation at the moment shows that there are no people in any African country who have achieved the stage of total liberation. Africa is still a continent of people suffering greatly from the weakness inherent in being exploited and humiliated.
This is why revolutionary political parties in independent Africa like CCM in Tanzania, ANC in South Africa, Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe, Swapo in Namibia or Frelimo in Mozambique, are still in fact liberation movements.
The CCM is facing stiff pressure from the West for its new Mining Bill that among other things, seeks to empower a Mining Authority to ensure that locals benefit from the exploitation of Tanzanian minerals. Western aid worth $2,7 billion has already been cut in protest to the new law.
The ANC might have wonderfully hosted the 2010 soccer World Cup, but the land question is still burning in South Africa, control of mineral wealth is still a burning issue among ANC cadres, and the role of the black South African in South Africa’s national economy is a hot issue among the people of that country.
Zanu-PF may be celebrating the irreversibility of the land reform programme but the mining sector is still under the control of aliens, the repossessed farmlands are yet to be fully utilised to capacity, and the party has grudgingly accepted Western funding for the country’s constitution making process — a dicey decision akin to allowing a calf to suck from a lioness.
Swapo still has to regain Namibia’s mining industry and Frelimo in Mozambique has been opening up to capitalist expansionism on very lenient terms.
For the generosity, Mozambique has graduated from a war-torn country blown to pieces by a US-sponsored civil war to what the West now views as an "emerging democracy".
The African revolution, whose aim is the true liberation of the African, is in conflict with the politics of imperialism, neo-colonisation and capitalist expansionism.
The object of neo-colonialism and imperialism is to ensure that Africa’s wealth is used for the benefit of the capitalists of Europe and America, instead of benefiting the African countries themselves. Therefore, participating in the African revolution is participating in the struggle against imperialism, and this is what revolutionary political parties like Zanu-PF must be made of.
The African revolution is a continental cause, and the Zimbabwean revolution is a national cause.
Those narrow minded people who view Zimbabwe’s revolution as a limited enterprise that rewards only a few vocal political activists together with powerful politicians must realise that a system that rewards only a minority is called a counterrevolution and not a revolution.
Zanu-PF cannot boast without shame if the power the party wrested from colonial masters has been handed over only to a minority of the Zimbabwean people.
This is why the guidelines to being a vanguard party must be a matter of public information.
Taking power from an oppressive minority is not in and of itself a revolutionary move, not until such power is successfully handed over to the oppressed majority.
It is only such transfer of power that can make the liberation legacy left by our departed heroes a worthy cause. With such transfer of wealth and power, we can proudly afford to attach real meaning to the Heroes Day.
Britain, France, Portugal, Belgium and Spain will continue to confront Africa’s prospect for total emancipation because all they seek to do is to maintain and continue the legacy of colonial privileges.
For Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi and others like Nigeria, the imperial enemy is Britain, albeit in collaboration with the US and others, and it must be part of the African foreign policy to acknowledge the realities of the hostilities of former colonial masters.
The responsibility of revolutionary parties is to serve the masses, and their various institutions, in an effort to safeguard national independence and to advance the emancipation of the masses.
Revolutionary parties need to outline the national goal, in Zimbabwe’s case the empowerment of indigenous Zimbabweans.
But the charting of objectives and policies does not by itself constitute good leadership. Leadership means organising the people so that the same people can see the value and benefit of the party — benefits for their own aspirations and not for the selfish ends of a few elites.
The party must have structures to supervise the implementation of party policies. There must be ways to ensure that the party actively supervises the activities and the running of its implementing agencies. Leadership entails reviewing the results of implementation and this is why a review of the land redistribution programme cannot be avoided. It can be deferred but can never be avoided.
It is a revolutionary party’s duty to ensure that it assesses the effects of the policy implementation undertaken by its agencies. It is important that the party ensures participation by people in devising solutions to challenges and problems affecting their lives and surroundings.
Zanu-PF must always remember its revolutionary origins and for the party it must be forbidden for a Zimbabwean leader to be arrogant, extravagant, contemptuous, or oppressive. A leader from a party such as Zanu-PF must by definition be a person who respects people, scorns ostentation and shuns tyranny.
A leader from Zanu-PF must epitomise heroism, bravery, and must be a champion of justice and equality.
There should be no room for vindictive characters in the leadership of a revolutionary party such as Zanu-PF.
As we remember the national heroes that founded this great nation of Zimbabwe, it is incumbent upon the party that housed these heroes under the armpits of ZANU and ZAPU during the armed struggle to ensure that the cause for which our heroes died is not betrayed.
Just like TANU and the Afro-Shiraz Party united to become Chama–Cha Mapinduzi in January 1977, Zanu and Zapu united to form the vanguard party called Zanu-PF in December 1987.
CCM has not betrayed the cause of its founding fathers and neither has Zanu-PF. But the legacy of these heroes can only be glorified if the revolution to which they committed their entire lives remains unbetrayed. A revolution must always be a friend of the people, the home of the people, the hope of the people, and the epitome of national mass aspiration and vision.
This is why a party of Zanu-PF’s calibre cannot centre its ideology on first generation rights like civil liberties and political rights.
This is a party that thrives on a revolution that transfers material benefits from a minority of oppressors to the majority — a party of second generation rights like land, health, food, clean water, education, and social welfare.
The priorities for both Zanu-PF and the MDC formations are clearly coming out in what the parties are emphasising in the outreach programme for the new constitution.

Obama and the farce of "Young African leaders"

Obama and the farce of "Young African leaders"

It would seem the participants were, if not overwhelmed by the occasion, all too grateful to be in America and talking to one of the most powerful men in the world and would do anything to stroke his plumage.
What the world saw then were sycophants parading as representatives of African youths, whom no African youth worth the name could really entrust with any mandate.

The Herald

By Tichaona Zindoga
Last week, United States President Barack Obama hosted over 100 youths from across Africa in what was dubbed the President's Forum with Young African Leaders.
The youths, derived from civil society, development, business and faith groups included Zimbabweans Sydney Chisi, Cleopatra Ndlovu and Masimba Nyamanhindi.
Chisi is the spokesperson of the Crisis Coalition of Zimbabwe and leader of Youth Initiative for Democracy Zimbabwe and Nyamanhindi is the director of the Students Solidarity Trust while Ndlovu is former director of an outfit called Women in Politics Support Unit.
The forum was to all intents and purposes to be a momentous occasion, knowing the charisma and the phenomenon that the US leader has been on his road to becoming the first black president of a country that has seen all the evil of racism. The meeting underscored Obama's pledge to proactively engage Africa "as a fundamental part of our interconnected world", which he made on his maiden visit to Africa as US leader last year.
Obama has unquestionably become also, for better or worse, something like a pop idol. Chisi, arguably the most notable of the Zimbabwe trio, could not hide his joy at the prospect of meeting Obama. He told American government journal, America.gov, that first of all he "would congratulate him (Obama) for making sure that his presidency is centered on young people . . . (and) really congratulate him in terms of having seen what most people have not yet seen: depending on young people."
Interestingly, asked what he expected out of meeting Obama, Chisi pledged to "demystify the rhetoric that has been presented to the world, especially by the former ruling Zanu-PF, about US foreign policy on Africa and Zimbabwe". "The last decade has been characterised by lack of democracy and lack of respect for human rights.
"We need to tell the Zimbabwean story, not only to the Americans, but also to African countries that have fallen victim to that rhetoric and propaganda. We need to bring out issues of building up the capacity of other young people to build synergies from the things we are doing here in Zimbabwe, but also to safeguard and direct our programming so that it is in line with the international community's views on Zimbabwe. And to bring the true story of what is happening in Zimbabwe.
"We have witnessed over time that people in the ruling class in Zimbabwe have made a living out of the crisis, what I would call crisis entrepreneurs. They have benefited from that and would not want to let go. There has been a wide gap in terms of leadership; so going into the United States for this process will also capacitate me to make sure that we also bring out and bridge the gap the leadership vacuum that has been created by the old guard that is not willing to deal with the succession debate, and not willing to leave power to bring young people into the debate."
During the forum last Tuesday, Obama, with his powerful oratory and charisma, told the "born frees" of the last 50 years that the future belonged to them. He said in his address: "So once again, Africa finds itself at a moment of extraordinary promise . . . while today's challenges may lack some of the drama of 20th century liberation struggles, they ultimately may be even more meaningful, for it will be up to you, young people full of talent and imagination, to build Africa for the next 50 years."
He pledged American support in areas such as food security, health, youth development, education, among other initiatives. When he later entertained some contributions from the audience he emphasised that Africans should determine their own destiny. He said: "I've always said, the destiny of Africa is going to be determined by Africans.
"It's not going to be determined by me; it's not going to be determined by people outside of the continent. It's going to be determined by you. All we can do is make sure that your voices are heard and - and you're able to rise up and take hold of these opportunities. If you do that, I think that there are going to be a lot of people who, even if they're educated abroad, want to come home - to make their mark."
Thus the American leader was as eloquent as ever and obviously carving a very moral figure of himself and his country. But one could not help but feel so disappointed by the so-called "young leaders" from Africa none of whom managed to pose even a single challenging question that would engage Obama out of his narrative of American eternal goodness.
Some of the contributions were nothing more than statements to lead Obama to harp on with his glossy ideals, sweetened by anecdotes, but that were essentially bereft of anything to take an oppressed continent forward.
It would seem the participants were, if not overwhelmed by the occasion, all too grateful to be in America and talking to one of the most powerful men in the world and would do anything to stroke his plumage.
What the world saw then were sycophants parading as representatives of African youths, whom no African youth worth the name could really entrust with any mandate.
Of course, the youths were oblivious to the fact that, in fact, America has been the chief nemesis of the liberation movements and the rights of African people over the last 50 years.
This arguably started with the CIA-assisted overthrow of Africa's founding father and Ghanaian first president Kwame Nkrumah in the 1960s, through the atrocities and destabilisation in Zaire, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Angola and Somalia, among others. America was one of the few countries that overtly and covertly supported the apartheid system that haunted the black people of South Africa until 1994. But the country has not relented, as it is along with other Western nations being linked to ongoing crises in Somalia, DRC and Sudan.
Zimbabwe has also witnessed the destructive meddling of America through its attempt to defeat the will of the Zimbabwean people. Various initiatives, groupings and activities have been sponsored to this end leading to the worst crisis since independence in 1980. This makes what Zimbabwean representative Chisi said and led Obama to say at the forum, particularly absurd if not downright preposterous and daft.
According to the transcript, Chisi says: "Currently our government is in a transition between the former ruling party, Zanu-PF, and the Movement for Democratic Change. And within this same context, Zimbabwe is currently under restrictive measures, especially for those who are partly in line with Robert Mugabe and of the Zidera Act.
"How has been the success of Zidera forced the formation of the inclusive Government? Because within Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe is still using the rhetoric of sanctions, racist, property rights abuse, human rights abuse in violation to the rule of law. How has been the success of that towards the implementation - the success of the growth of young people?"
Obama replies: "Well, you probably have a better answer than me. (Soft laughter.) So you should be sharing with our team what you think would make the most sense." There are a number of significant observations one can make from the above exchange, where Chisi rather mumbled and drivelled in leading Obama to make pronouncements on Zimbabwe.
The first is, of course, Chisi's acknowledgement of the existence of sanctions and how they were intended to alter the politics of Zimbabwe to the disadvantage of President Mugabe. He attributes the formation of the inclusive Government between Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations to the sanctions' pressure on President Mugabe.
Since it is known that the inclusive Government was born of the necessity to ease the unprecedented social, political and economic ills, it can be concluded that, from Chisi's statement, that Zidera was responsible for the same ills. This is largely true.
Second, Chisi rubberstamps the allegations of human rights abuses, property rights, rule of law, etc to legitimise American charges against Zimbabwe. It will be noted that the civil society organisations in Zimbabwe, which are barely known beyond their city offices, were created and funded by America both as pressure groups and as mirrors of American perception of Zimbabwe.
In which case, members of these groups have been feted and celebrated in America and other Western capitals for their treasonous role back home. Thanks to Chisi's puffery of America's involvement in Zimbabwe, Obama does not really find it hard to continue with his usual rhetoric on Zimbabwe and America's institutionalised hate of President Mugabe.
Yet he fails to explain why the sanctions have been hard to sell to the world, from the region to the United Nations Security Council. He just comes short of saying that the suffering of Zimbabweans and the "counter-production" in America's quest to remove President Mugabe is collateral damage.
He acknowledges that the sanctions on Zimbabwe have been something close to "punish the people for the abuses of a leader". Obama says he "would love nothing more than to be able to open up greater diplomatic relationships and economic and commercial relationships with Zimbabwe". Yet no one followed that up with the question as to why, after he promised a new era of US relations, his country continued to snub and vilify Zimbabwe when the country had generally asserted its willingness to make friends than enemies.
In a word, that was the bane of Obama's meeting with the so-called "Young African Leaders". For all their achievements in the various fields, including academia, they made a mockery of the continent they purported to represent. For all there is to know, they were just intellectually bankrupt and unable to tell their left from right. In fact, if Africa is going to have the next generation of leaders like these, then it is but the end of the quest for self-determination that began 50 years ago.
We have also seen Sydney Chisi opposing the legitimate sale of Zimbabwe diamonds, on the frivolous American-inspired basis that they are "blood diamonds" mined in a conflict situation.
This was even against the professional observations and recommendations of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme's founding chair Abbey Chikane.
The American-funded civil society movement represented by Chisi and his ilk casts a pall on the future of the continent. The "Crisis Coalition Zimbabwe" name says it all. Academic and newspaper columnist Dr Tafataona Mahoso had such a premonition. When Chisi appeared on national television purporting to represent Zimbabweans Dr Mahoso unpacked the meaning and intent of the organisation and people behind it.
"The name evokes the essence of illegal regime change," he noted. "Crisis means emergency, disaster, catastrophe, calamity, meltdown, dire straits, tipping point. "The closest words to crisis in Shona are ndere, shangwa, nhamo and ndondo. The "crisis", Chisi refers to is the sanctions-imploded economy that has had to be tied to a life support machine of the Western powers that imposed the sanctions.
The "life support machine" is the equivalent of Obama's crocodile tears that he shed for Zimbabwe and told the world how "heartbroken" he was.
Only the "Young African Leaders" were such a bad joke to notice.

Obama's Phoney Zim heartbreak

In Obama, imperial America misappropriated my colour and redeployed it… against me.

The Herald

By Nathaniel Manheru

THIS week US Ambassador Charles Ray told the Press he was "still a student" learning Zimbabwe’s ways, with a clear assurance to all of us all that he would soon graduate.

This testament of studentship followed a delinquent walk-away by himself and his peers in the European Union, at the National Heroes Acre early this week following a barbed, brittle message from a defiant President Robert Mugabe denouncing illegal Western sanctions and imperious strictures from the same on our nation.

The walk-away was followed by a summons to Foreign Affairs where the ambassadors earned themselves a well-deserved admonition from Foreign Minister Mumbengegwi.

By way of self-recompense, the lashed ambassadors in turn convened their own Press conference at which they gave a show of unyielding defiance, even though Manheru knows better.

Even ambassadors do have faces that must be saved at times.

American treachery

More or less the same time this was happening, Ray’s boss, US President Barak Obama, was feting youngsters from Africa in a State Department-sponsored public diplomacy programme, dubbed President’s Forum for Young African leaders.

It is a propaganda outreach programme which has been running for years, all to provide a grand finale to that country’s studentship programme targeting Third World candidates for exposure to American soft power, including American values.

Zimbabweans were part of the crowd, Zimbabweans chosen on partisan lines.

The selection was done by MDC-T’s Usaid-sponsored civic faces, principally the so-called Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition and its support offshoots such as Youth Initiative for Democracy, Students Solidarity Trust and Women in Politics Support Unit.
Dear reader, you are watching instruments of American policy elaboration in Zimbabwe.

Thus, Obama had a captive audience, an audience he had founded and sponsored in the context of a broader search for world-wide hegemony.

His forum is attended by 115 "young leaders" from across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Not "leaders" as designated by their host nations or defined by values from Africa, but "leaders" for America and her broader strategic goals in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This strategy of buying into the loyalties of other people, other nationalities, for America’s insidious goals against those same nations, is a long established one in American geo-politics.

You may recall that among the early beneficiaries of this programme was one West African Nigerian playwright called John Pepper Clark who, after long internship in American universities and other socialising institutions, proceeded to expose and denounce this elaborate snare in a much-celebrated book called "America, their America".

It is a must read for anyone wanting to know that side of America. I wonder how many in that group are aware of this larger project. In the meantime, the continent delivers her children to America for ensnaring.

No knee-jerk

On the occasion of this gathering, President Obama revealed how "heartbroken" he was about goings-on in a Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe, its President, whom Obama does not "see… serving his own people".

I said the audience was drawn from Sub-Saharan Africa.

The question is why Obama would choose to focus on Zimbabwe and President Mugabe.

The temptation is to link this focus to the fact that less than 48 hours before, President Mugabe had attacked Europe and America, precipitating a walk-out by concerned ambassadors.

That then would make the focus on Zimbabwe a mere knee-jerk, an off-cuff reaction to a slur.

I doubt that very much.

Whether or not the President had urged America and Europe to drown into a cistern or some such unseemly place, or even to spend an hour in the Pope’s bedroom for sorely needed penitence, Obama would still have focused on Zimbabwe and its President.

In fact this focus started well before his presidency, with all hopes that Obama would be different, ringing wishful and forlorn.

I even reminded you reader that Obama was a black man going into White House, not the other way round, adding only those with white hearts were eligible for such grand entries.

Obama had long arranged his ducks for an obligatory assault on Zimbabwe, an assault which only surprises those who are not familiar with dimensions of anti-Zimbabwe activities which the American mission here has intensified lately.

But that is a subject for another day.

Which Zimbabwe

What for me was unprecedented was the shallow nature of the assault.

I thought Obama would pull a clever one that would have got us thinking.

No, he didn’t.

He was banal, and terribly mistaken to the point of self-embarrassment.

Which developments in Zimbabwe are breaking his heart? Which Mugabe is he describing?

Which Zimbabwe is he talking about?

The same Zimbabwe which his Secretary of State says "bars" Congressman Donald Payne by welcoming him into the country?

The same Zimbabwe whose ambassador "is still a student"?

The same Zimbabwe that is now Africa’s most literate society? The same Zimbabwe whose agricultural performance surpasses projections?

The same Zimbabwe that falls within the Kimberly Process?

The same Zimbabwe that rescues an American contingent in Mogadishu from being dragged and roasted in hostile streets?

That protects its embassy here from a scheduled attack by Al Qaeda?

Which Zimbabwe?

Heart too hard

Viewed that way, you begin to realise that while Ambassador Charles Ray is still a student, someone else is much worse: miles and miles away from the classroom, well into the winter-ploughed field, his empty head sagging, big mouth spouting gibberish.

In so short a time, big America has embarrassed itself with revealing goofs, goofs that uphold its abiding image as the most ignorant yet most powerful nation on this earth.

The Zimbabwe America is organising against is not a country.

It is an idea, much the same way al-Qaeda is.

It is another idea governors of America need for catharsis, the same way they needed the concept of al-Qaeda and bin Laden following a spectacular security lapse.

America exploited our chrome here throughout the Rhodesian days.

They dis-obligated themselves from UN sanctions against racist Rhodesia, all in the name of their national security concerns.

Today we have mounds and mounds of dead earth left in the wake of this exploitation by the Americans.

Yet no Zimbabwean expresses heart-break.

Or accuses America of not serving our people.

Do the mounds of this dead earth have to float

in Florida for Obama to realise even little Zimbabwe has rights, fauna and flora, to protect against marauding behemoths like BP?

Who cleans the cyanide left here by Union Carbide?

And broken lives abandoned to our creaking social security scheme?

And does a bully have a heart that can be broken?

Why slap sanctions on a people already "served un-well" by Mugabe, if you have a heart that can be moved by compassion, a heart moved vigorously enough to be broken?

Obama who?

But all this is to lose the larger context.

I listened to Obama addressing veterans of America’s wars, most of the wars fought overseas with no just cause.

Here was a black president waxing lyrical about these wars which his own colour peers – people like Muhammed Ali – denounced and refused to participate in.

No, for him these wars created heroes in the line of national service.

And these heroes had to be rewarded and compensated for killing lesser beings.

That is what an American President must say, not what a black man in American Presidency should say.

You look in vain for differences between Obama and Bush, between the Democrats and the Republicans.

In Obama, imperial America misappropriated my colour and redeployed it… against me.

In Obama, America has a golden chance to enforce its hegemonic policy on Sub-Saharan Africa without facing the charge of racist imperialism, of second colonialism.

That includes heightening tensions in the Horn of Africa in the name of al-Shabaab, in order to push the AU into accepting the idea of direct American deployment and base on the continent by way Africom.

African-African against Africa

Zimbabwe is especially vulnerable at this point in American imperialism.

Any American conflict with Zimbabwe will have taken place under an African-African American President, guided by an African-African American Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, started by a President represented here by an African-African American Ambassador.

Yet the real problem is not Obama, Carson or Ray.

It is that about us which "poses a continuing extraordinary threat to American foreign policy", that which provoked Zidera in the first place, well before Obama was a White House prospect.

It is that which requires that America recruits a black for the furtherance of her interests as a construction of white power.

On this mater, Obama is not a boy playing in winter-ploughed field, playing a children’s game.

He is a professor well schooled and guided; a warrior of other people’s wars ready to draw yet more blood for America Plc.

Zanu-PF’s flaws

I promised I was going to throw the spotlight on Zanu-PF this week.

Much space has already been taken up in dealing with rogue America.

I will make a point or two about Zanu-PF in the era of inclusivity.

Zanu-PF has been in power since 1980.

It has had long enough time to understand this society from pebble to mountain. Yet it does not.

Three points suffice.

The diamond flaw

How is it that we did not know we had diamonds in Marange?

These were discovered in the 1950s, held since then by one De Beers; exploited surreptitiously after then by the same.

Why did we not know, we gods of this land?

What is worse, even after we knew it, we never quite grasped the extent of the wealth in our possession, until some Jew told us we controlled between 25 to 35 percent of the world supply.

It is a claim we are still to test and authenticate, we the gods.

Our ignorance has far-reaching consequences.

Globally, State power and diplomacy - its expression - is founded on a nation’s worth flowing directly from its strategic asset.

We did not know our asset and thus did not know our worth, which is why we have been a paper-ball in the playground.

Any feet kick it.

Blind literates

Two; from 1980 we taught children, built schools for them until they saw the light.

Today we a nation of enlightenment and we bring greater light to the rest of the world, Obamas included.

We have conquered knowledge, mastered all difficult arts, including the art of harnessing thunder and lightning, admittedly and regrettably for petty deployments such as evening out on unsettled small debts in the village.

We are one people where small debts are not resolved by small claims courts - but by Amandiora, the god of lightning and thunder.

We deploy a super gun to quash a gnat and confront bullies with blunt needles.

We endured colonialism for so long, but with the secret of lightning, somewhere in Manicaland.

Yet it takes a report from a UN agency to tell us that ah, your nation is literate, most literate on the continent.

But we the most reviled, with even the dark clay ports daring to laugh at our ebony-dark bottoms.

Who educated those children for that spectacular literacy level?

Who inventoried our success and achievements? Who proclaims them?

Not us! We are Zanu-PF please!

Unclaimed halcyon

Three; we have been punched silly as a ruling party that destroyed a once buoyant economy, condemned it to a total meltdown.

And the years of glory, succeeded by years of infamy are given: 1980 to 1999; 2000 to 2008 respectively.

Demurely, we take all in, mouths sealed, we of Zanu-PF.

Two points: who governed Zimbabwe during her so-called halcyon days? Whose credit is it?

Secondly: what was happening between 2000 and 2008?

What bearing do all these occurrences have on what is happening today in 2010, well under two years of this so-called inclusive Government, happening in spite of spiteful sanctions?

Floating on a giant wave

We wake up to be told by an MDC secretary-general, now Finance Minister, that the economy will register upward of 7 percent growth.

No, it will slide into the negative zone.

No, no, no, it will register a modest 3,5 percent growth.

Ah, no, no, no, no, it is now 5 percent-plus growth.

And like nhuba on a giant wave, we rise and fall along, seemingly with no mind of our own.

We the gods in the chair for the past 30 years, can’t we count?

Zip sagging

The secretary-general elaborates.

Agriculture has surpassed all projections, led by tobacco and grain cereals.

FAO corroborates.

Again we discover that we have given rise to recovery without knowing it.

Mining.

We are again told mining has done exceedingly well. Sky-high, we jump again, we who are accused of killing mining through indigenisation.

So whence comes this growth?

The upshot?

Zanu-PF is the universal fall guy, its spectacular achievements, the orphan claimable by any father.

We allowed them to tell us that for that decade of infamy, there was no investment in the country.

Zimbabwe came to a standstill before starting to peddle backwards.

Yet in the countryside, on the heels of our land reforms, huge investments were taking place, quietly.

We made the love, but cannot recognise the resultant pregnancy and birth.

We the father asks: whose child is this?

Need we wonder when MDC-T yells "mine, mine", zip sagging? When MDC-T is tired of pilfering the outcome of our hard-made investments, it then invokes the myth of "surprising performance", as if economies are some kind of deus ex machina, gods from machines.

Budiriro yeZanu-PF haina rupfawo.

In Zimbabwe success has no brand, which is why record-less parties and politicians walk stout, all on greatness thrust upon them, thanks to Zanu-PF’s reticence.