Anglo-Saxon attempt exposes need for strong state to secure national resources.

However, the nasty experience and abuse they had to endure at the hands of the white racist minority in the KP system should compel the nation to adopt a long-term strategy for handling and anticipating such abuse and sabotage. The strategy of the racist minority was to turn the whole process and the conference on its head, by rejecting the official legal documents and replacing them with unofficial and clandestine ones obtained through fraud and espionage

The Sunday Mail
AFRICAN FOCUS
By Tafataona P. Mahoso

Mines and Mining Development Minister Cde Obert Mpofu and his delegation to the latest Kimberley Process meeting in Tel Aviv in the fourth week of June 2010 should be congratulated for the way they fought off an attempted lynching of Zimbabwe by a US-led Anglo-Saxon cartel over Chiadzwa diamonds.

However, the nasty experience and abuse they had to endure at the hands of the white racist minority in the KP system should compel the nation to adopt a long-term strategy for handling and anticipating such abuse and sabotage. The strategy of the racist minority was to turn the whole process and the conference on its head, by rejecting the official legal documents and replacing them with unofficial and clandestine ones obtained through fraud and espionage. The strategy first revealed itself when two Western spy-linked organisations demanded the rewriting of KP rules and the redefinition of “blood diamonds” especially against Zimbabwe and for the purpose of vengeance against Zimbabwe. These two spy-linked organisations are the British Global Watch and the Canadian Partnership Africa Canada. They were soon followed by yet another pair, the British Amnesty International and the US-based Human Rights Watch.
When the Zimbabwean delegation got to Tel Aviv, they discovered that the racist countries had conspired to treat the official KP monitor, Mr Abbey Chikane, and his reports on Zimbabwe as mere decoys which were used to keep the Zimbabwean state from noticing an alternative and clandestine network of spies and compromised officials operating secretly inside Zimbabwe and working on a fraudulent report or reports which would then be introduced abruptly and dramatically at the meeting in order to force a displacement and rejection of the officially sanctioned KP monitor’s report. Farai Muguwu of the so-called Centre for Research and Development was a key figure in the clandestine and fraudulent network. The bogus “Chief Chiadzwa” by the name of Newman Chiadzwa was another key player. Then there were some officials in the inclusive Government and the Parliament of Zimbabwe who had also been roped in to concoct the fraudulent report(s) which were supposed to bury Mr Chikane’s official and professional report in muck.
What the Anglo-Saxon racists did not count on was that the state would uncover enough of the clandestine and criminal network to force the isolation of the US and its allies at the conference. What was uncovered demonstrated to the majority of the members of the KPCS that the US-led operations to tarnish Zimbabwe’s diamonds were not only illegal but also diabolic, bordering on economic terrorism and total contempt for the rules of international trade, diplomacy and decorum.
Tel Aviv 2010 A Repeat of Past Tactics
Zimbabwean patriots must realise that the US and its white allies have used the same strategy and tactics before and succeeded in turning the majority at similar conferences to become a “coalition of the unwilling”. This time they failed to pull it off, but they will not stop there. They will make other attempts at other meetings. That is why it is important to remember similar incidents in the past and to think of a long-term strategy against future attacks. Similar attacks in the past include the following:
l Anglo-Saxon attacks on the Presidential election of 2002 and the Parliamentary elections of 2005 were based on a similar strategy where Western lies or Western-sponsored lies were orchestrated in order to drown official and legitimate Sadc and AU reports declaring the elections to be free and fair . . .
l The events at the conferences which convinced Zimbabwe to leave the British Commonwealth in 2003 were similarly staged and equally diabolic and fraudulent.
l The attachment in 2002 of a negative anti-Zimbabwe addendum to the otherwise favourable “Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and other Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo” was based on similar fraud and coercion at the level of the UN Security Council.
l Mrs Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka’s 2005 “Report of the Fact-Finding Mission to Zimbabwe to assess the Scope and Impact of Operation Murambatsvina by the UN Special Envoy on Human Settlement Issues in Zimbabwe”, was based on a similar strategy and tactics, whereby most of the evidence from credible state institutions was either ignored or misrepresented while lies from donor-sponsored originations and “activists” were accepted without question. The Tibaijuka’s report was justified formally as an inquiry on behalf of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan but submitted straight to the very same Anglo-Saxon gang which just attempted to lynch Zimbabwe at the June 2010 KP meeting in Tel Aviv. The same powers in March 2006 tried to manipulate the UN Secretary-General into visiting Zimbabwe without invitation in order to worsen the propaganda damage which Tibaijuka had inflicted on the country on behalf of Britain and the US but under the cover of the UN.
What is common among the events just listed is the fact that Zimbabwe was ambushed and lynched by the Anglo-Saxon forces through the subversion of events and processes which were supposed to be governed by normal rules of diplomacy, mutual respect and decorum. Thinking ahead, it is important for Africans to relate the Zimbabwean experience over diamonds and the KP system to other developments led by the same US and its allies. The alleged involvement of Farai Muguwu in acts that go against Zimbabwe’s economic and security interests suggests a link between imperialism’s use of NGOs and its use of spies, soldiers and terrorists. There is a link between sponsored “civil society” and sponsored military and intelligence programmes for destabilisation.

That is why in each of the five regional divisions of the US military programme called African Command (Africom), the commander is a soldier who is deputised by a civilian. This link also explains why USAID is linked to both the sponsored NGO network (civil society) and to the US-sponsored military command and network called Africom. The process of ambushing and lynching other countries for economic or geopolitical reasons is not limited to civilian conferences and civilian negotiations alone. It also uses the military and, of course, spy networks.

Investigations carried out by the Chinese show that the incident between North and South Korea, where a South Korean submarine was hit by a torpedo or mine, killing 46 sailors, was staged by the US in order to create a political-military situation which could justify not only the lynching of North Korea but also the overthrow of a newly elected Japanese Prime Minister who had been elected on a pledge to remove US military bases from Japan. In the context of apparently credible media reports that North Korea was about to wage war on its southern neighbour and sister nation of South Korea, a Japanese politician mobilising the masses against US military bases in the same region came to be seen as a mad man. Indeed, he was removed soon after being elected.
Africa is opening itself to much worse manipulations than those recently inflicted on North-East Asia if it allows the US Africom project to grow and spread on African soil.
The Anglo-Saxon powers, led by the US, already control a continental network and superstructure of “civil society” throughout Africa. It ranges from individual activists and NGOs at the village level to national headquarters of the same NGOs operating on a nation-wide basis; it ranges from donor-funded, quasi-judicial human rights commissions to regional bodies such as the Sadc Tribunal, all the way to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR.)
What to do? The Need for a Strong State
It is no coincidence that all the attacks on Zimbabwe over the Chiadzwa diamonds have been meant to weaken the role of the State in securing national assets and to persuade Zimbabweans who are engaged in national constitution writing to create a constitution which elevates NGOs to demi-gods while whittling down the State to a minimal necessary evil.
While the Africom proposal would mean the global extension of the US state on African soil from Kisangani to Chimanimani, the people of this region (Zimbabwe in particular) are being advised by activists funded by the same US state to downsize their own state and its laws while multiplying the number of NGOs and “independent” tribunals which are totally dependent on foreign and mostly Anglo-Saxon donors for their survival. It is important for Zimbabweans to recall that the same Anglo-Saxon cartel which admitted its ownership of Farai Muguwu and others in the anti-Chiadzwa network also looted Angola’s diamonds for 31 years under the guise of fighting communism through Jonas Savimbi's Unita. The Western hypocrisy and racism did not begin in Tel Aviv in 2010.
As John Peck once wrote in his October 2000 Z Magazine article: “This spring 2000, De Beers promised to certify that all its consignments of diamonds do not include any diamonds controlled by rebel forces rebelling against the legitimate and internationally recognised government of the relevant country.”
This De Beers certification was not true. But the same Western media and governments looked the other way because Savimbi’s Unita was seen as a Western anti-communist client movement. In Angola as in Zimbabwe, there were attempts made by the Western cartels to make the legitimate Government appear to be the rebel or terrorist movement simply because it was supported by Cuba, the OAU and the former Soviet Union.
Zimbabwe has been a target of similar destabilisation attempts for the last 10 years. The current Anglo-Saxon hostility arises from the realisation that the destabilisation efforts have failed so far.
Precisely because the entire Anglo-Saxon axis and its NGO-media cohorts were willing to look the other way, Unita helped the West to loot diamonds valued at more than US$4 billion, counting just the period between 1992 and 1998 alone. The tendency for the West to treat sovereign states as rebels while supporting illegal regime change forces as human rights defenders is exactly what Zimbabwe confronted at Tel Aviv in June 2010. A country can cope with such mischief only if it builds a strong and competent central state.
According to African Business editor Anver Versi in his editorial called “On Knocking African Leaders” (February 1998): “The quality of leadership needed to deal with any one major social or economic convolution is staggering — Africa, however, is undergoing at least three or four major convolutions at the same time. This is unprecedented in history and therefore the type of (African) leadership that has emerged over the last 40 years has been unprecedented . . . Leaders who have grown up from their native soils cannot (and should not) be put in the same category. Many of them suffered great tribulations and made enormous sacrifices for their people and countries. The challenges they faced have been far more daunting than anything any Western leader has had to confront since the Second World War.”
This is true of Zimbabwe. It is true of DRC. It is true of Angola. It is true of most countries in Southern Africa. This is the context within which Zimbabweans embark on constitution making and it must guide the controls they put in place to safeguard the resources of the people such as the Chiadzwa diamonds and the coal reserves in Hwange, Gokwe and Chiredzi.
As we embark on national constitution making, it helps to listen to the Nigerian Pan Africanist writer Chinwezu, who says: “Have the Africans not yet learnt the central lesson of the last 500 years of global history: that if a people sit upon great resources and neglect to build the power to defend themselves, then their goose is cooked whenever the powerful want those resources? I propose to start by focusing on the following . . . that to lose sovereignty is to lose everything . . . A people’s sovereignty is their most precious possession, even more precious than their land; for without sovereignty, they can be deprived even of the opportunity to breathe the free fresh air. Sensible people risk their last ounce of treasure and their last drop of blood to protect or recover their sovereignty; fools part lightly with it.”
This was also Zimbabwe’s message to the racist cartel trying to scuttle the Kimberley Process against Chiadzwa diamonds.

Abusing the Kimberly Process...

The United States, Canada and Australia are abusing the Kimberly Process, an initiative to prevent the sale of “blood” diamonds, in order to frustrate Zimbabwe’s efforts to establish a multi-billion dollar annual revenue stream from its rich Marange diamond fields. The aim is to keep up economic pressure on the country to undermine popular support for Robert Mugabe and his land reform and economic indigenisation programmes.

What's Left

By Stephen Gowans
Zimbabwe’s Marange diamond fields hold out the promise of billions of dollars per year in diamond sales, a bounty that could help the southern African country develop economically, and place it among the world’s top diamond producers.

But if the United States, Canada and Australia have their way, Zimbabwe will have to find a way to sell its diamonds without a seal of approval from the Kimberly Process, “a joint governments, industry and civil society initiative to stem the flow of conflict diamonds – rough diamonds used by rebel movements to finance wars against legitimate governments.”
Abbey Chikane, a South African businessman appointed by the Kimberly Process to monitor the Marange fields, recommended that the diamonds be certified. He also recommended that Zimbabwe’s army, which has guarded the fields from the anarchy of illegal diamond diggers hoping to strike it rich, continues to do so until the police are in a position to maintain order.
Most African countries — including Zimbabwe’s neighbors South Africa, Botswana, Angola and Tanzania — backed up Chikane’s recommendation, as did India, China and Russia, which together represent the bulk of humanity. But the United States, Canada and Australia blocked certification.
The three countries, among the world’s richest, point to claims made by two ostensibly independent nongovernmental organizations, Global Witness and Partnership Africa Canada, to justify their decision. They say the Zimbabwe military is committing human rights abuses at the Marange fields and running a smuggling operation.
So why did the Kimberly Process auditor recommend certification, despite allegations of human rights abuses and smuggling? First, the Kimberly Process seeks to prevent the sale of rough diamonds to finance rebel wars, not to prevent human rights abuses and smuggling. Second, Kimberly Process chairman Bernard Esau says there is “no proof of alleged human rights violations at the Marange diamond fields.”
The United States, Canada and Australia, along with Britain and the European Union, have been actively seeking to drive Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF from power for the last decade. Their regime change efforts are dressed up as “democracy promotion”, but Washington’s own documents make clear that “democracy promotion” is nothing more that helping the Western-backed, -conceived and -funded Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which currently shares power with Zanu-PF, govern alone. The MDC would end, and possibly reverse, Zanu-PF’s policies of land redistribution and economic indigenization — policies which are giving substantive meaning to the country’s hard fought for independence.
In order to undermine popular support for Zanu-PF and its policies, the United States, Canada and Australia, along with other Western countries, have imposed sanctions which have had a crippling effect on the economy. While they deny that the sanctions are anything other than targeted, and that they’re aimed only at top Zanu-PF leaders, the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, a US law passed in 2001, blocks Zimbabwe’s access to international lines of credit. Explicitly taking aim at Zimbabwe’s land redistribution program, the law has cruelly undercut economic development.
Zimbabwe’s land reform and economic indigenization programs remain an inspiration to poor and landless Africans of neighboring countries, who decades after liberation from European colonialism, apartheid and white settler rule, have yet to see any substantive change in their conditions. The economic indigenization program, which mirrors similar policies that South Korea, Japan, Venezuela, Canada and other countries have once used or currently use to promote domestic economic development, requires that at least 51 percent of Zimbabwe’s economy be placed in the hands of Zimbabweans who were disadvantaged by colonial oppression and white minority rule.
While it’s true that Global Witness and Partnership Africa Canada are nongovernmental organizations, they are hardly independent of the Western governments that have worked for regime change in Zimbabwe. Global Witness is funded by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Britain’s Department for International Development, the European Commission, Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs, the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency and Norad. Partnership Africa Canada receives its funding from many of the same organizations, including a Canadian government department (Foreign Affairs and International Trade) and agency (the Canadian International Development Agency.)
Many NGOs active in Africa create the illusion of being independent of the Western governments that have historically despoiled the continent, while relying on the same governments to provide their funding. It’s highly unlikely that organizations whose existences depend on the support they can get from Western governments stray far from their funders’ interests and foreign policy imperatives. The implication that NGOs are independent of governments is deliberately deceptive.
The Marange diamond fields, then, present a problem to Western governments that have been working to undermine popular support for Zanu-PF and its policies. How can sanctions work if they’re offset by billions of dollars per year in diamond sales?
The answer, of course, is that a rich flow of diamond revenues, and anything else that promises to make life better for Zimbabweans, counters the aims of the sanctions, and therefore, under the logic of Western foreign policy, must be blocked.
To frustrate Zimbabwe’s efforts to benefit from the Marange fields, the United States, Canada and Australia have abused the Kimberly Process. The initiative is intended to prevent rebel movements using rough diamonds to finance wars against legitimate governments. Is there any evidence this is happening in Zimbabwe? None at all.
But the flaw in the Kimberly Process is that it operates on the principle of consensus. That means that participants who seek to deny certification can, for their own mischievous political reasons, withhold their approval and therefore prevent consensus, invoking some unrelated humanitarian principle as justification.
“We want to be orderly, to do like what other countries in the region are doing,” said Mugabe last May, “but countries like the US, Britain, Australia and Canada want to take advantage of us by ensuring the process creates the same effect like sanctions on us; that we should not be allowed to sell our diamonds.”
“They have been heard saying what happens to our sanctions if Zimbabwe sells its diamonds? It is the regime change agenda all the time.”

"sell those diamonds now and bust the racist sanctions"

The Western warmongers are unsettled by one terrifying fact: the diamonds will help Zimbabwe bust the racist sanctions once and for all. Once the sanctions are dismantled, the regime-change agenda will be left in tatters, with Zanu-PF firmly in the driving seat. It is a nightmare that is giving Western politicians as well as their think-tanks and surrogates sleepless nights.

The Sunday Mail
(Editorial)

An astonishing revelation has emerged from Israel: Zimbabwe has the potential to become a producer of 25 percent of the global diamond supply in terms of value within just a few years.

In practical terms, this means one in every four diamonds under the sun will come from Zimbabwe. To patriotic Zimbabweans, this has to be the best cause for celebration since April 18 1980.
The stupendous scale of Zimbabwe’s diamond deposits was confirmed by Israeli gemstone consultant Mr Chaim Even-Zohar during an intercessory meeting of the Kimberley Process Certifi-cation Scheme (KP) in Tel Aviv last week.
Mr Even-Zohar’s message to the world was simple and straightforward: Zimbabwe is becoming a vitally important player in the diamond business, therefore the KP must make every effort to ensure that the country remains a member of this certification scheme.
Virtually all the members of the KP — except Australia, Canada, the United States and the European Union — are agreed that Zimbabwe has a right to sell its diamonds.
Owing to the discredited imperialist intentions harboured by these four spoilers, there was no consensus at the Tel Aviv meeting. Discussions ended on Thursday in a stalemate over the Zimbabwe ban, despite all-night talks that broke up at 5.30 am and then continued for several hours later in the afternoon.
The people of Zimbabwe are outraged. How can this injustice continue? The same Western governments that have imposed racist sanctions on Zimbabwe are once again ganging up against our nation after discovering that the valuable stones of Marange are going to be Zimbabwe’s economic salvation.
The Western warmongers are unsettled by one terrifying fact: the diamonds will help Zimbabwe bust the racist sanctions once and for all. Once the sanctions are dismantled, the regime-change agenda will be left in tatters, with Zanu-PF firmly in the driving seat. It is a nightmare that is giving Western politicians as well as their think-tanks and surrogates sleepless nights.
But the three countries that are needlessly politicising Zimba-bwe’s diamonds are getting it all wrong. They falsely assume that the KP is the only platform available to diamond traders. There are plenty other avenues out there, so there is no way a nation as fiercely independent as Zimbabwe can be held to ransom by a clueless bunch of bullies.
The Tel Aviv meeting convened in light of the second report of the KP monitor to Zimbabwe, Mr Abbey Chikane. In question was the continued implementation of the Joint Work Plan, agreed upon at the plenary meeting in Swakopmund, Namibia, in November 2009.
When the matter of whether or not to adopt Mr Chikane’s report was put to a vote, a total of 69 KP members gave Zimbabwe the thumbs-up while only a paltry four — Australia, Canada, the US and the European Union — sought to oppose. But as soon as the Western powers realised that they had been defeated in a democratic process, the rules were abruptly changed. The KP chair, Mr Boaz Hirsch, said there had to be consensus, meaning every member must consent. How ludicrous can you get?
In his latest report, Mr Chikane makes it clear that Zimbabwe has covered considerable ground in implementing the KP recommendations. In view of the fact that the KP-appointed monitor has given Zimbabwe full marks, we have to ask the question: on what basis are the governments of Australia, Canada and the US conniving to allege that Zimbabwe has “blood diamonds”? What objective facts are they advancing in labelling these stones “blood diamonds”?
We hold no brief for Mr Chikane, who is now being unfairly vilified by Canada and the US. He may have his imperfections, but he is certainly not a fly-by-night character in the diamond industry. He chairs the South African Diamond Board and that alone says a lot about his credentials.
In disregarding the latest report on Marange, the US, Canada and Australia are pandering to cheap politicking by seeking to cast aspersions on Mr Chikane’s competence. They are also discrediting the KP itself.
The behaviour of these three countries is ridiculous. After all, the Kimberley Process is a voluntary club.
And how, in all seriousness, do these countries seek to replace Mr Chikane with Finance Minister Tendai Biti as Marange monitor? What does Mr Biti know about the mining and processing of diamonds? We are dealing here with people who are panicking that Zimbabwe is about to bust their evil sanctions.
No country has the power to stop Zimbabwe from selling its diamonds. As a nation, we have voluntarily subjected ourselves to the KP procedures. We can, by the same token, voluntarily withdraw from the cartel.
As Mr Even-Zohar confirms, Zimbabwe has become a major player on the world diamond market. By virtue of this nation’s huge potential, those who seek to demonise and isolate our diamonds are doomed to failure.

In any case, we know for a fact that the Kimberley Process primarily deals with trade in rough diamonds. Should Zimbabwe choose to cut and polish its stones — and this is already under way (refer to last week’s issue of The Sunday Mail) — the imperialist loudmouths who cowardly hide behind the KP veil will be outflanked and defeated.

On the matter of diamonds, the people of Zimbabwe are united in telling the coalition Government: sell those diamonds now and bust the racist sanctions.

Black skin or black ignorance?

Africa agrees to a UN Security Council headed by five non-African countries, and Africa agrees to an International Criminal Court whose entire trials list is made up of five African countries and 13 individuals all from Africa — and that in a period of 12 years.
How can we as Africans say we can do without our own global leader economically, politically and at international law?
Wafawarova Writes

By Reason Wafawarova
GIVING a lecture at Wellesley College in Boston, Massachu-setts, Louis Farrakhan had this to say; "We are not oppressed because we are Black; we are oppressed because we are ignorant. It is ignorance that keeps us on the bottom, not Blackness."

Many times we are made to think so much against the blackness of our skin, to fight that blackness and to try and change it.

It is not the blackness of the African skin that we must be fighting but the darkness of our ignorance, the blackness of a deep-seated lack of knowledge.

It is this kind of ignorance that makes the life of an African a life of contradictions.

We inherited, cherished and perpetuated colonial educational systems that make us dumb, that teach us not to think; welfare systems that keep us poor and perpetually dependant, foreign aid that keeps our nations in a permanent state of poverty, religious establishments that are going to send us to hell; we embrace international laws that maintain inequality.

There is this vain motivation that makes our people seek an education.

Many of our people believe that knowledge is meant to make us acquire a decent home, a good job, a nice car and a decent savings account.

Real knowledge must make the African provide decent homes to others, provide good jobs, manufacture nice cars and own banks where other people can have decent savings.

We need to evolve from a system of contradictions that is often projected in our African parents, a system that creates self-defeating attitudes, negative self-perceptions and frustrations. We have allowed the global charity industry to grow into a billion-dollar enterprise at our own expense.

The West is now awash with professional philanthropists whom we consider helping professionals — ultimately helping themselves to us, rather than helping us.

They have earned obscenely comfortable lives in the name of our perpetual plight, and the educated among us choose to join their ranks and to maintain the status quo of our so-called Dark Continent.

As Amos N Wilson noted in the book "The Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness", the response of some of our African people to the contradictions of the world order dictated to us by the Westerner is "over-compensation".

We see some people who will strive to prove to the white folk that we blacks are the greatest in the world.

Wilson argues that sometimes we notice a success by our own black people that is, in fact based on failure; a success that can be considered to be in itself a type of failure.

This is the type of success that is void of satisfaction and peace — a success that makes someone feel psychologically cheated.

This is success that comes with obsession and compulsiveness, and many times it is this kind of success that gets some African leaders piling up stolen monies in European banks.

We aspire to be like this wonderful white image of success that we actually want to disappear into the white man so we can prove that we have made it to be like him; and to have our money in the same banks with him, have our kids studying and staying in the homeland of the wonderful white man.

We feel unsafe to keep within Africa whatever riches we acquire because we always see imminent disaster pursuing us — imminent disaster created by the pressure that pushes us to emulate the lifestyle of the foreigner in the West, a lifestyle we feel is threatened by the sea of poverty-stricken masses surrounding us.

The reality of the world we live in today is that the white man dominates other races in as far as world affairs are concerned; economically, politically and even militarily. Caucasian people are not at our stage of development in Africa.

We are coming out of colonialism, we are struggling under imperialism; and we are still grappling from a dark night of ignorance.

The Caucasian should not think that Western evolution makes him superior. The Caucasian comes not from such a great background himself.

These are people who struggled with life in the hills and caves of Europe. They did not know how to bury their dead or how to cook their food, and the British are still not the best of cooks.

Yet you hardly ever hear the Europeans ever talking about their beginnings. You do not find Europeans glorifying the caves. It is nothing to talk about. They have put that behind them and they have moved on, and we must equally evolve from our past into a bright future that we shape for ourselves.

We cannot be studying Egyptology so that we can prove to the white man how great we are, or hope that one day when the white man admits and acknowledges that Egyptians were black Africans — then he will accept us as human beings.

Our study of Egyptology or that of the greatness of African architecture at Great Zimbabwe; cannot be a collective defence mechanism, or a means of dealing with our hurt pride. We cannot use our past as a means of trying to slip into the acceptance of white people.

We cannot hang-up with history and exaggerate certain of our achievements as a way of salvaging our damaged ego.

We always have this ache of inferiority that never seems to go away. Our people study and graduate in their thousands from various universities, but the sense of inferiority persists.

This is because our motivation is wrong; it is because we are pushed by the wrong reasons.

The problem with this kind of motivation is that even if we manage to replace those who oppress and rule over us, we will only end up being exactly like them. Wrong motivations set our minds up for being inculcated and possessed by the very devil we fight against.

This is why we need to change the way Africa is proceeding right now, otherwise another revolution will have to be fought; and it will have to be fought against us.

This is not a revolution by Caucasian-sponsored political parties, the so-called "pro-democracy" parties and so forth. We are talking of a revolution of African masses seeking to free themselves from imitators of the Caucasian; from people who respond to Western domination and oppression by over-compensating themselves in a bid to catch up with the white folk.

We cannot build African economies on development aid. That brings a victory that leaves the taste of ashes in our mouths. African economic success is not a matter of making it in the system that has been set up by the European. It is a matter of questioning that very system.

Our success is not just a matter of equality within the system but a result of critical analysis of the entire system.

It is not enough for us Africans to look at the system and react with rage, apathy, stereotypy, paranoia, suspicion, depression or mania. We cannot confront this system with bourgeoisie nationalism either.

We have to be very careful and make sure that we do not see our suffering masses as only in dire need of comprehensive lessons in liberation history, the great history of Africa, lofty ideals of morality, patriotism, sovereignty and so forth.

What we are fighting against is what Apostle Paul called "principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." This is what the Imperial system led by the United States is like.

We are not fighting just a mindset of a repressive people. We are fighting against real flesh and blood people who control the world’s economic system, its social system, and its military system.

Though of great importance, mere knowledge about our liberation legacy, our great African history, morality, patriotism, or sovereignty is not going to be enough to extricate us from the situation we are in today as Africans.

We need to dismantle the system established in Africa by the Westerner and not seek to survive within its dictates; not to emulate it and hope for the best.

We cannot keep looking at white, yellow, or brown people; crying endlessly about our own condition. It is time we learn what there is in order to evolve on our own — not to aspire to evolve into whiteness.

Louis Farrakhan pointed out that when an embryo is being formed, the first thing to be formed is the head and after it has developed then hands and other limbs are formed.

God knows the futility of giving hands and limbs without a head. It is the head that tells limbs what to do.

Yet post-independent Africa agrees to a world economic order headed by the G8 and by its former colonisers.

Africa agrees to a UN Security Council headed by five non-African countries, and Africa agrees to an International Criminal Court whose entire trials list is made up of five African countries and 13 individuals all from Africa — and that in a period of 12 years.

How can we as Africans say we can do without our own global leader economically, politically and at international law?

Why are we wondering that our hands have done next to nothing?

What do you do with only your hands and feet?

Dance Kwasa kwasa?

Does that build a nation?

The Westerner has sought to be our head so that we remain his hands and feet. In fact labourers are literally called "general hands" by those who own and run industries.

Every African leader who has stood for black people has been castigated, demonised, and many have been destroyed. Zimbabweans must simply forget about working positively with Westerners until President Mugabe is fatally discredited or even destroyed.

No amount of progress will make Westerners ever work with such a strong African leader who chooses to stand and defend the rights of his own people. That is the fate of Zimbabwe’s inclusive Government.

They did not agree to work with Kwame Nkrumah, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Thomas Sankara, Samora Machel, Patrice Lumumba, Julius Nyerere, Haile Selassie or Kenneth Kaunda.

These are some of our African nationalists who sought to head the economic affairs of the African continent and they were castigated, demonised, assassinated, murdered in cold blood, and discredited as examples never to be followed.

Africa is a continent with a long history of a people that have not been treated right. It is a wonder that we somehow think that the people who did not treat us right in the past can teach us right today.

We continue to seek total dependency on the Caucasian for food, clothing, education, shelter and employment. We even think that Caucasians can teach us democracy.

What rank naivety!

Our minds have been fed wrong and we behave wrong. Our youth hate themselves and are ashamed of the blackness of our skin.

How could we be fed properly and yet we hate ourselves?

How can we say we are well educated and yet we deny ourselves?

How do we expect other people to love us and yet we do not love ourselves?

How do we expect other people to respect us and yet we do not respect ourselves?

Why should we expect other people to do for us what we are unwilling to do for ourselves?

When one looks at how the Westerner has sought to steal, plunder, exploit, suppress, oppress and enslave, it becomes no exaggeration to say man has become so weak and wicked that he has lowered himself to the level of a beast.

Western knowledge is being used to destroy rather than to build. That behaviour is beastly in nature.

The US calls itself the world leader today but it uses its knowledge to destroy the planet and so many nationalities.

We are not being taught by human beings but by deadly beasts. It is a wonder the world is expected to show human qualities when we are being led and taught by beasts.

When our people are feeding from the Western teacher of democracy, they are feeding from death itself.

All that is wanted through the "democratisation process" is to create client regimes and to own and control our people, as well as our resources.

Farrakhan warned the United States to be careful about its foreign policy doctrine of maintaining its position of supremacy by might.

He said, "When you suck the blood of the peoples of the world, at some point there is going to be a natural combustion because people are going to revolt against the man who knows and kept knowledge from others to oppress, enslave and exploit them."

Is Africa heading for this revolting or are we still in the comfort zone of putting up with subjugation and inferiority?

Africa we are one and together we will overcome.

It is homeland or death!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@rwafawaro va.com or visit www.rwafawarova.com

Julius Malema and the poor South African cause

The ANC, and white South Africans in particular, need to accept a little truth. The Malema phenomena is more than an individual. It is an idea. He represents a generation which is ready to confront a monstrous evil in the form neo-colonialism and its more insidious sibling, the liberal ideology. South Africa’s problems are not going to be solved by killing Julius Malema or dismissing him from the ANC for telling the truth.
www.newzimbabwe.com
By Joram Nyathi
THERE are only two ways to deal with ANC Youth League president Julius Malema: either the whites physically eliminate him, or the ANC sacrifices him. Neither option resolves the key question of Malema’s popularity: the quest to give meaning to African independence by taking control of our natural resources.
The whites will not kill him because they are wise enough not to precipitate the same catastrophe which they fear an unrestrained Malema represents, and the ANC as a party can only sacrifice Malema at irreparable damage to itself and its credibility as a revolutionary movement. But it risks sacrificing both the man and principle through a lack of resoluteness in pursuit of what is historically just. That is if President Jacob Zuma wants to earn himself the tag of Mr Nice Guy, and forgets why the poor black majority voted him into power.
Because of their fear, the whites, especially farmers and big corporates, have shifted the task of dealing with Malema to the ANC itself. In particular, President Zuma is now being asked to deal with this Frankenstein monster which he created to fight his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki. It’s a pretty clever trick to get the ANC to fight itself while exonerating those who want a weakened ruling party which won’t threaten their vested interests.
For their part, whites are fighting Malema at the symbolic level. He is semi-literate if not a “buffoon” like Zuma himself. Malema poses a threat to freedom of expression and the press. Malema exposes Zuma’s partiality for Zanu PF and President Robert Mugabe against MDC-T as a mediator in the Zimbabwean political crisis. His “kill the boer” song is racist. Malema is a threat to foreign investment.
So it was that all powerful media in SA were in celebratory mood when it was announced that Malema was going to face disciplinary action from the ANC for all these sins. It was time to silence Malema once and for all. The ANC played along, but luckily retreated at the brink last week. Malema was fined only R10,000 for disrespecting Zuma. He was also ordered to go for political lessons. Slap on the wrist, sorted!
That is as much as the ANC can go. The Youth League in most of the country’s provinces is fully behind Malema. They have made it clear they elected Malema for his radicalism, which is clearly lacking in the older generation. The ANC is fully aware that silencing Malema is not the same thing as resolving the cause he is championing.

In turning against Malema instead of confronting recalcitrant white farmers and mining conglomerates who won’t share anything with poor blacks, the ANC leadership is showing unforgivable cowardice. It leaves future generations a terrible legacy of a people who won the liberation war but refused to take control of the country.

The ANC, and white South Africans in particular, need to accept a little truth. The Malema phenomena is more than an individual. It is an idea. He represents a generation which is ready to confront a monstrous evil in the form neo-colonialism and its more insidious sibling, the liberal ideology. South Africa’s problems are not going to be solved by killing Julius Malema or dismissing him from the ANC for telling the truth.
South Africans, black and white, must confront head-on the material conditions which breed the likes of Malema. It was because of these conditions that Nelson Mandela went to prison for 27 years. The “ideal” for which he said he was “prepared to die” is still a pipedream for the majority blacks while the whites have appropriated the man to themselves and turned him a mock idol on his people.
What is sad is that while white South Africans are aware of the danger to themselves of eliminating Malema, they are refusing to learn plain lessons from the stubborn stance chosen by their cousins in Zimbabwe. The land reform which they so much revile began on a willing-seller-willing-buyer paradigm. The approach didn’t work because those who “owned” the land asked for “market prices” which they knew the government could not afford. They would not part with fertile farms, with some farmers as late as the year 2000 still owning up to 13 farms each.
They thought they could still keep their farms in perpetuity by instigating their indigent farm labourers to vote en mass in the February 2000 referendum against a new constitution which would allow government to seize these farms without paying compensation except for improvements such as houses and other infrastructure. They won the vote but lost the farms.
They thought they could stop the process by attacking leaders of war veterans who spearheaded the land reform as lawless thugs.
Looking at the travesty going on in SA, one sees people who still believe “not in a thousand years” will they share their ill-gotten wealth with blacks.
Zimbabwe is now in the second phase of the struggle for control of its natural resources: the indigenisation programme in which blacks must ultimately acquire 51% equity in all foreign-owned companies worth more than US$3,5 million. (In the original regulations the figure was US$500,000).
In South Africa’s case, Malema might be one of those who benefited from black economic empowerment programmes of the past 16 years. His detractors prefer to see patronage as the only source of his wealth. Whichever is the case, he lives the poverty of the poor majority everyday to be able to tap into their anger and frustration with a revolution which appears to have ended prematurely before it could deliver on the promise of independence. These are the realities which should exercise the collective conscience of South Africans of all races. Instead, what one sees is a preoccupation with form over content by most white South Africans.
Malema might be semi-literate, according to those who benefited under apartheid, but he knows there are millions of black South Africans who are worse than he is, thanks to racial segregation which favoured the white race in everything, including the quality of education. Most of the cadres who fought the liberation wars in Southern Africa were semi-literate or illiterate. So that epithet against Malema hits at the core of all those who sacrificed their education to liberate their country, but today wallow in poverty because they are illiterate! How can history be so cruel?
The crushing irony is that our countries are full of literate black journalists who are historically illiterate. So illiterate in fact that they believe it is right to stop Malema from singing liberation war songs like “Dubul’ ibhunu”. Like one sage observed: “A history forgotten is a future lost.” So illiterate that they believe a SADC Tribunal seeking to reverse Zimbabwe’s land reform should be enforced just to stop South Africa and Namibia from embarking on similar programmes.
The ANC, as the oldest liberation movement in the region, needs to provide decisive leadership. One can only hope that the meeting of five former liberation movements in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, last week breathed new life into the ANC. Silencing Malema can only prolong the inevitable. It is more likely to bring forth a 100 angrier, semi-literate Malemas so long as things don’t change for the black man.
We are too familiar with this hypocrisy in Zimbabwe where all rights count for blacks, except economic rights, that is the right to own their God-given natural resources.
Joram Nyathi is the communications director of the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee – a multipartisan body overseeing Zimbabwe’s power sharing government. He writes in his personal capacity

Why we muust stand on our own

The lesson here is clear for those who are observant. Once a Third World government is regarded as hostile to western interests, its products are demonised and its economy ruined.
The Financial Gazette

Letter from America By Ken Mufuka
The ongoing struggle between the Zimbabwe government and the Kimberly Process, which has restricted Zimbabwean diamonds from the world market, comes at a time when intellectual consensus is exposing the second recolonisation of Africa through economic means.
At the time of going to press, the Kimberly Process consortium was still debating whether Zimbabwe’s Chiadzwa and Marange diamonds should be admitted to the world market. The issue here is not that the Chiadzwa diamonds are blood diamonds (procured through slavery), but that its proceeds will be used by a government hostile to western interests.
These diamonds will allow Zimbabwe to stand on its own feet, if exploited properly.
There is also a crusade here about the use of Zimbabwean asbestos, even though the grain mined in Zimbabwe is less toxic than the Canadian species. The issue therefore is not entirely about the toxicity of asbestos but the fact that the asbestos mines are owned by a government hostile to western interests.
The Mashaba-Zvishavane asbestos have a huge market in Japan and China for use in automobile brakes. Once again, they could help make Zimbabwe self sufficient in foreign exchange.
The lesson here is clear for those who are observant. Once a Third World government is regarded as hostile to western interests, its products are demonised and its economy ruined. We could be doing better in tourism, which is the golden goose that lays golden eggs. Despite the lifting of sanctions on Zimbabwe by the US State Department, the wording in their “advisories” to travellers is that one travels at his own risk. Thus, the rapid expansion of tourism has been delayed.
Again the lesson is that unless our government comes to an amicable relationship with the US and the European Union, our trade will continue to be hampered and our progress slowed down.
Apart from that lesson, the majority of development scholars have now agreed that foreign aid actually does more harm than good. The new thinking, exemplified by Asad Ismi, who is regarded as the scourge of the World Bank, is that there is no such thing as foreign aid really.
Apart from the everyday issues, foreign aid restores the colonial virus of white supremacy with a vengeance. A university that trains graduate engineers and has professors carrying degrees in their rear ends, invites a 24-year-old German boy to dig a well for them. Even the worst imperialists did not create a more humiliating scenario than that.
Ismi says that when all the sheep are counted, foreign aid is a tool of recolonisation. “Twenty years of World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s (policies) have de-developed Africa and left it in a state of economic and social collapse.”
Very often the money is never delivered. Does anybody remember the U$2 billion dollar Zimcord donor conference in 1982? A look at the budget reports of 1980-1985 does not show any injection of “donor free money” exceeding 15 percent of the budget. So the money was just big talk.
During the government of national unity talks in 2008, does anybody remember the U$5 billion injection of donor funds promised? At the time of going to press, only U$2 million from Nordic donors can be identified as “free money” in the Zimbabwe budget.
In 1979, during the Zimbabwe talks with Rhodesian leader Ian Smith, US President Jimmy Carter promised billions to sweeten the Rhodesian land settlement scheme. None of it materialised.
The aim of this letter is to remind our Zimbabwean brothers that historically, the countries which received the most foreign aid, like Zaire under Mobutu Sese Seko are actually the poorest countries on the continent. The aid was never intended for the Zairian people. It was intended to buy off the dictator so he could become a surrogate apparatchik of the US.
Ismi says that while World Bank policies have led to increased exports, foreign investments and globalisation integration, the results are negative. By devaluing the local currencies, debt has quadrupled despite increased exports. When countries reach the “highly indebted level” the World Bank recolonises them. Most African exports have decreased in value; so that 1 000 bags of peanuts in 2000 would buy the same amount of goods 100 bags did in 1900. That is daylight robbery.
Americans do not even follow the blueprints they impose on others. In a recent recession provoked structural adjustment, US President Barack Obama asked the Federal Reserve Bank to print money and support banking instructions at zero interest. The Obama “stimulus money” was used to prevent teachers from being laid off. The budget deficit tripled to U$1 trillion, the highest since World War 2.
Obama has been lecturing the Greeks to reduce their expenditure all round by 15 percent and show a sense of self sacrifice.

Why then do African countries still seek advice from the West? The answer is very simple. The leaders and intellectuals are mentally colonised. Their home-grown solutions lack credibility unless they have foreign stamps of approval from their mental colonisers.

New economic thinking is that foreign investment is best utilised if invited by local entrepreneurs who already know the lay of the land. Government to government aid should at best be used as supplementary to already existing programmes.
Zimbabweans have enough mineral resources of their own to be able to jump start their economy. Non-governmental organisations are by nature political and increase dependency syndrome and contempt for African solutions.
It is a mistake, however, to banish them. They will go away only if hunger and health needs are being met by the local government.

Imperialism in judicial robes.

The Sunday Mail

AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona P. Mahoso

Constitutional Amendment Number 17 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe is the only paragraph, the only recognition in our supreme law, which accepts (grudgingly) that the people of Zimbabwe did demand and did achieve a popular revolution overturning the 100-year-old regime of white racist land theft and colonial land tenure.

But the misnamed African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR), a donor-funded and highly infiltrated outfit of the African Union — which harbours pretensions to become the supreme court for the whole of Africa — has just ruled it is competent to put the Zimbabwe land revolution on trial and to entertain the former white land thieves with their supporting clans of Tshombe and Judas as legitimate complainants against Amendment Number 17 for the purpose of forcing its repeal. The ACHPR has ruled that Communication 321 of 2006 is acceptable to it and will be heard, that is against Constitutional Amendment Number 17 of 2007. In other words, where the Parliament of Zimbabwe, the Government of Zimbabwe, the three parties in the inter-party agreement, and the overwhelming majority of the people of this land have all agreed that the indigenous land revolution should never be reversed, the ACHPR has ruled that it is willing to hear a case which is premised on the assumption that the white land thieves or white recipients of African stolen land over the last hundred years have the right to go to an “African court” and reverse the African land revolution.
For the purpose of agreeing to hear the white settlers’ challenge to Amendment 17, the ACHPR accepted the following allegations as sound:
l That the legal profession and their NGO supporters in and outside Zimbabwe publicly opposed Amend-ment Number 17 when it was still a Bill in July 2005;
l That it is wrong to allow the popular interests and demands by the African majority to reclaim their stolen land to produce an amendment which bars the courts from deciding land acquisition and resettlement;
l That Constitutional Amendment Number 17 “will and has been applied” to fix past imbalances, and that fixing past imbalances on behalf of Africans is against “the principles of international human rights law”;
l In Amendment Number 17, it is not popular demand and popular interests which barred the courts from dealing with land acquisition and resettlement; rather it is just the whim of the executive branch of Government and this amendment “permits the same executive” to indulge in legislative excesses which might lead to the breakdown of “the rule of law” in all areas and throughout the country;
l That the amendment discourages the former land thieves and the lawyers and NGOs supporting them from taking land grievances to the courts and that is a bad thing;
l That, although the amendment was made specifically to deal with land acquisition and resettlement, in future it could “lead to a complete removal of jurisdiction of the courts of Zimbabwe” which would precipitate a complete breakdown of the rule of law and the withdrawal of legal protection for all Zimbabweans.
Before dealing with the meaning of the allegations levelled against Zimbabwe and Amendment Number 17, let us look at the ACHPR’s reasons for agreeing to hear the case.
On face value the allegations show a genuine case of violations of the African Charter for Human and People’s Rights;
Although none of the NGOs and associations who brought the case to the ACHPR lost land, the commission has chosen to adopt the position of popular judicial activism “giving everyone with an interest to protect human rights in Africa the capacity to file a Communication for the” ACHPR to consider. In this case, the executives of the Law Society of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, Sadc Lawyers Association, East African Law Society, Bar Council of South Africa, Swaziland Law Society, Law Association of Zambia, Law Society of Lesotho, Zanzibar Law Society and others — all enjoyed legitimate standing to bring this case before the ACHPR by virtue of their expression of interest in human rights in general and not because Amendment Number 17 prejudiced or injured them or their members in any way;
It is an established tradition of the ACHPR that human rights NGOs are global citizens without borders, so that in the case of Zimbabwe’s land resettlement, the complaining organisation “need not be a national or registered body within the borders of the accused country”. Therefore the rights of those who have been classified by the commission as human rights defenders, if they are defending white people, are considered to be borderless and superior to those of the African victims of colonial mass dispossession and displacement.
Finally, the commission gave as a reason for accepting the case the white settlers’ allegation that Amendment Number 17 deprived whites of all and any domestic remedy. This, of course, is a lie both in terms of the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe over “human rights” and in terms of resettlement. A white farmer occupying land acquired for resettlement can apply to be resettled just like any other citizen. The real reason why the whites may not want to be resettled by the same State is that the programme makes whites equal with the once dispossessed Africans and that the resettled whites cannot get the same hectarage of land or multiple farms they once had before the revolution.
Africa’s Neo-colonial Shells Begging for Imperial Funding and White Racist Content
Readers may have watched ZTV’s Melting Pot programme on June 15 2010 which featured Mr Davidson Gomo of the Affirmative Action Group against Sydney Chisi of Crisis Coalition Zimbabwe. The subject was the struggle to certify Zimbabwe’s diamonds at Chiadzwa with the Kimberley Process.
One incident in that programme is relevant to the reader’s understanding of what is happening at the so-called African Commission and what is happening in Zimbabwe: Sydney Chisi confessed that in 2001 Crisis Coalition Zimbabwe was set up because of two developments: the remobilisation of war veterans and peasants in support of the popular indigenous land reclamation movement, and the success of Sadc forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo against the combined Ugandan-Rwandan invasion of that country, which had precipitated genocide and looting.
Chisi, in that June 15 programme, opposed the certification of the Chiadzwa diamonds allegedly on behalf of local human rights NGOs, but his remark about the creation of Crisis Coalition in 2001 revealed a foreign agenda which the host of the programme failed to unmask: Where did the funds come from to start a new NGO to be called Crisis Coalition Zimbabwe? What native Zimbabwean interests set up an NGO to oppose the popular indigenous land reclamation movement and to prevent Sadc from ending the foreign-sponsored genocide and looting of the DRC?
Since Chisi was once again opposing the certification and sale of Chiadzwa diamonds, what popular constituency in Zimbabwe was he and his NGO representing this time? What exactly was the strategic interest linking land reclamation, the repelling an invasion of DRC, and the indigenous exploitation of Chiadzwa diamonds?
It is no coincidence that the same donors who are funding Zimbabwe’s constitution-making process today are the same ones which are funding the NGOs seeking to repeal Amendment Number 17 and to deny Zimbabwe the certification of its Chiadzwa diamonds under Kimberly Process while at the same time using go-betweens to buy those very same diamonds which they condemn as “bold diamonds” through the Press. The ACHPR has never taken any interest in exposing this diabolic role of the donors because it is also donor-funded. The OAU passed the resolution to write a human rights charter for Africa in Monrovia, Liberia, in 1979. The draft African Charter on Human and People's Rights was adopted in Kenya in 1981. At that time the African Charter was praised for appearing to elevate the popular collective interest of the African majority above individual and procedural rights or at least to elevate popular and collective rights to the same status as individual rights.
But three factors soon overturned that apparent uniqueness of the African Charter:
l The idea of popular collective rights remained on paper but it was abandoned in setting up procedures which made individual rights superior to collective rights and NGOs superior to governments and whole societies.
l The OAU (now the AU) did not have a budget for its commission when the enabling protocol was adopted and opened for signature in Burkina Faso in June 1998. This opened the commission to external inducement, manipulation and infiltration by Western donors.
l The original intention of the OAU heads of state and government was to create a real African Charter and African Commission, but the content has become more and more Roman-Dutch and Anglo-American because of the initial entrenchment the legal traditions of the major powers and cultures that colonised Africa, the prior Euro-centric training of all the judges appointed to the commission, and the deliberate campaign by the same Western powers to make the European and the Inter-American Charters superior to the African Charter by using sponsorship to retrain most African lawyers and judges through various short courses, seminars and conferences.
A closer look at that system which has given us “activists” such as Sydney Chisi, Farai Muguwu and Jestina Mukoko reveals that foreign donors are free:
l To sponsor the super court or commission at the continental level of the AU;
l To train, retrain and sponsor the judges who sit in that super commission or court;
l To pay the lawyers who in each African country prepare, coach and defend the alleged victims of human rights abuses who will appeal at the right time to the same super commission or court sponsored by the same donor;
l To sponsor and pay for the coaching of the necessary witnesses who will write to the same sponsored super court or commission in support of the alleged victim who is also sponsored by the same donors;
l To sponsor, train, retrain and otherwise offer incentives to journalists who publicise the alleged victims’ case at home and abroad; and, finally,
l To sponsor and publicise the dubious international prizes and awards to be given periodically to the lawyers, journalists, complainants and others willing to participate in this grand corruption of Africa and African people. Younger readers may wonder about the reference to the clans of Tshombe. Tshombe was the disposable African stooge who together with Joseph Mobutu betrayed and deposed the first elected Prime Minister of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, and took part in his assassination. Tshombe pretended to set up a break-away Katanga Republic which divided Congo and its people and provided a cover for the Belgians to detach and retain the mineral-rich territory from the rest of the country. After the crime of overthrowing Lumumba's government, assassinating Lumumba and his ministers and covering up the roles of Europeans and North Americans in the crime, Tshombe received a letter from the King of Belgium which shows clearly why to this day the name Tshombe remains a Pan-African epithet against traitors. This is what the white king wrote to Tshombe on March 13 1961:
“Dear President,
I would like to tell you how moved I was . . . The whole of Belgium and I myself are particularly aware of the loyalty you have always shown my country (Belgium) and me. Rest assured that I very much appreciate the wisdom with which you have governed Katanga in extremely difficult and delicate circumstances . . . Please accept, my dear President, the expression of my highest esteem.”
However, the Belgians used Tshombe and his break-away regime only for the purpose of getting rid of Lumumba and his nationalist government.
Once that was achieved, they also got rid of Tshombe and his regime for lack of long-term viability and legitimacy in the eyes of Africa.
They and the US and UK preferred Joseph Mobutu, whom they installed through more violence and assassinations. The only way the Western powers could overthrow and kill Lumumba was by using both Tshombe and Mobutu and they could not install
Mobutu without first getting rid of Lumumba. Tshombe was only a tool, just as the ACHPR and its hordes of NGOs are also tools in a global war of ideas.

Washington tips its hand

When Hillary Clinton says it is "extremely difficult" to walk the line between supporting the people of Zimbabwe and undermining Zanu-PF and President Mugabe she knows American actions are first and foremost designed to make the people suffer.

This, in turn, would sway them against those champions of historical and social justice.
The Herald

By Tichaona Zindoga
Last Monday, United States Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stated that her country was finding it "extremely difficult" to "walk a line between supporting the people, (and) keeping the pressure on the (President Robert) Mugabe leadership".

Speaking at a Diplomacy Briefing Series Conference on Sub-Saharan Africa at the State Department in Washington, Clinton regretted that "the ruling party (Zanu-PF), the ruling clique within that party continues to benefit from aid, benefit from the diamond trade, benefit from corruption to a very significant degree".

She said: "We're trying to walk a line between supporting the people, keeping the pressure on the (Robert) Mugabe leadership, working with South Africa to try to get that message across."

She admitted it was a tricky proposition.

"But I'm not going to stand here and say we have some perfect formula, because it's extremely difficult to try to do what we're doing, and (make) a difference for the people of Zimbabwe, but we're going to persist in doing so," she said.

There are some interesting aspects in Clinton's statements.

The first relates to the false sense of morality and obligation to protect the people of Zimbabwe, and the rest of the world, by this giant country responsible for the illegal and often-violent overthrow of scores of developing world countries' leadership in the past 50 years.

Not unconnected to this, the US assumes that the people in these poor countries, including Zimbabwe, should support the foreign cause despite the obvious contradiction and the glaring illegitimacy and high-handedness of the superpower.

In a word, the people must trust their lives not with the leaders they choose but foreigners who come to "save" them from these leaders, the "Whiteman's burden."

Incidentally, they might as well suffer the collateral damage of US wars on their leaders, but the people must be prudent enough to see the greater good of the onerous task of the superpower.

The US tries to buy the allegiance of the people by providing the so-called humanitarian aid, which is a rather curious act of tying people to a life support machine appended to a system that destroys the very same lives and livelihoods.

The US has consistently boasted that despite sanctions it imposed in 2001, buttressed by a 2003 presidential decree, they have increased aid to Zimbabwe, which Clinton repeated during the seminar on Monday.

Clinton chooses to ignore how denial of balance of payments support to Zimbabwe and the embargo on companies and their leaders have precipitated hyperinflation (before dollarisation), capital and human resources flight and general decline in the country.

This economic annihilation, including the limitation on Government capacity to deal with preventable crises such as the 2008 cholera outbreak, form the collateral damage.

It is the high premium of this damage on the people, which has already been witnessed, that makes it "extremely difficult" to "walk a line between supporting the people, (and) keeping the pressure on the (President Robert) Mugabe leadership".

Add the US' demonic determination to deny Zimbabwe any form of economic prosperity, which cause sanctions have not exactly helped, and the chasm between the reality of sabotage and myth of support for the people of Zimbabwe is ever yawning.

The reason for this is that there is basically no line between the country's economy, the leadership and the people in general.

For this reason, the US decision to assault Zimbabwe's economy by blacklisting certain influential individuals and companies was a direct offensive on Zimbabweans.

Similarly, efforts to deny Zimbabwe access to lines of credit from multilateral lending institutions and right to exploit and benefit from the rich diamond resources in Chiadzwa are nothing more than blatant attacks on Zimbabweans.

But these attacks on Zimbabwe are the Americans' way of "keeping pressure" on President Mugabe's leadership.

On the balance of things, which can also be interpreted from Clinton's statements, US interference in Zimbabwe has made life difficult for the masses.

Where America has tried to hoodwink, bribe or reassure the people, it has cultivated and cherished hate against Zanu-PF and President Mugabe.

While ignoring and vilifying the genuine African revolutionary need of the people of Zimbabwe of ownership of land and its resources, the West has created, nurtured and glorified a captive coalition of mercenary forces who should crowd the African movement out.

The coalition is also charged with spreading the ideals of the so-called human rights and free and fair elections but never in the primacy of the indigenous ownership of resources.

The US would like the world to believe that it is this latter group of individuals that represents the best interests of the country.

Apart from the often so "generous" donations and support, they also receive special mentions.

The so-called civil society, comprising scores of US-sponsored outfits, has the distinction of having cropped up in the era of the West's onslaught on developing nations in the 1960s and responsible for American ideological wars and colour revolutions.

These dogs of war and overthrow activists include NGOs, human rights organisations and pseudo-political and economic analysts who line their pockets with filthy lucre from the National Endowment for Democracy.

They use their "high standing" to block the voice from the village crying for a share of the national heritage in the name of human rights and donor support.

Their role is to continuously paint a picture that justifies not only their receipt of donor money but also US meddling in Zimbabwe.

The case of diamonds in Chiadzwa gives this opportunity to bloody Zimbabwe for the American shark.

The attempts to portray Zimbabwe's diamonds as emanating from a war situation are very much part of the game.

There is a very keen aspect in the Western world's reference to Zanu-PF as the "ruling" party and MDC formations as the opposition despite the formation of the inclusive Government last year.

It is not that the opponents of the revolutionary party are any comfortable with its continued existence or exercise of power.

Rather the tag justifies the continued interference in Zimbabwe based on the bad image the West has carved in the party.

It would defeat the purpose of interference to highlight, as it stands, that Zanu-PF is part of a coalition government that shares power and processes.

The party must thus be painted as all-pervasive and resisting of change or reform thereby warranting not only its punishment but also the systematic support of the "forces of change" by the US.

The punishment of Zanu-PF is by way of punishing people and stirring their emotions against the revolutionary party which the US and its local and international allies fault and scapegoat.

This brings the issue to its full turn.

When Hillary Clinton says it is "extremely difficult" to walk the line between supporting the people of Zimbabwe and undermining Zanu-PF and President Mugabe she knows American actions are first and foremost designed to make the people suffer.

This, in turn, would sway them against those champions of historical and social justice.

US Congresswoman Cynthia A. McKinney of Georgia saw through this fraud when she challenged ZDERA in the House of Representatives on December 4, 2001.

She said that the "real reason why the United States Congress is now concentrating its time and resources on squeezing an economically-devastated African state under the hypocritical guise of providing a 'transition to democracy' was for the maintenance of illegal Anglo-Saxon settler property rights to land they stole from indigenous Zimbabweans.

"When we get right down to it," she said, "this legislation is nothing more than a formal declaration of United States complicity in a programme to maintain white-skin privilege."

"We can call it an 'incentives' Bill, but that does not change its essential 'sanctions' nature. It is racist and against the interests of the masses of Zimbabweans.

"In the long run the Zimbabwe Democracy Act will work against the United States having a mutually beneficial relationship with Africa."

That goes for US actions on Zimbabwe in the name of helping the people, legislative or otherwise. They can only be as fraudulent as they are racist and regressive.

Africa must reject International Court of Justice

There is a clear lesson for countries in Africa and elsewhere: do not join the ICC and do not refer your country to the ICC.

The ICC does not have Africa's welfare at heart, only the furtherance of Western, especially European, foreign policy, and its own bureaucratic imperative to exist, to employ more Europeans and North Americans, and where possible, to continue to increase its budget.

The Nation on the Web

By David Hoile
Last week in Kampala, state members of the International Criminal Court began their first ever review conference of the court since its establishment in 2002.

There is certainly a case for examining the activities of the ICC over the past eight years.

When the Assembly of States parties, those states that have signed up to the ICC statute binding them to its jurisdiction, met in Kampala there was a lot they should have been worried about, not least of which the fact that the ICC has proved to be unfit for its mandate.

The ICC's claims to international jurisdiction and judicial independence are institutionally flawed and the court's approach has been marred by blatant double-standards and serious irregularities.

The Hague-based ICC is increasingly being seen as the European equivalent of the US tribunal at Guantanamo Bay.

While the presents itself as an international court, this is quite simply not the case. Its members represent just over one quarter of the world's population: China, Russia, the US, India, Pakistan and Indonesia are just some of the many countries that have remained outside of the court's jurisdiction.

The truth is also that the ICC is as independent as the United Nations Security Council and the court's European Union funding lets it be.

Far from being independent and impartial, the ICC's own statute grants special "prosecutorial" rights of referral and deferral to the Security Council.

Political interference in the legal process was thus made part of the court's founding terms of reference.

The court is also umbilically tied to the European Union which provides over 60 per cent of its funding. The expression, "He who pays the piper calls the tune," could not be more accurate.

The ICC has ignored all European or Western human rights abuses in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq or human rights abuses by Western client states. Instead, the Europeans have chosen to focus the court exclusively on Africa.

Despite over 8,000 complaints about alleged crimes in at least 139 countries, the ICC has started investigations into just five countries, all of them African.

Given Africa's previous traumatic experience with the very same colonial powers that now direct the ICC, this must create an alarming sense of deja vu for those who live on the continent.

The European Union is additionally guilty of economic blackmail in tying aid for developing countries to ICC membership, while at the same time criticising Washington for tying aid to bilateral immunity deals with countries that were members of the ICC.

The court's proceedings have often been questionable where not farcical. Its judges, some of whom have never been lawyers, let alone judges, are appointed as the result of vote-trading among member states.

The court has produced witnesses who recanted their testimony the moment they got into the witness box, admitting that they were coached by non-governmental organisations as to what false statements to make.

There have been prosecutorial decisions which should have ended any fair trial because they compromised the integrity of any subsequent process. The ICC's first trial stalled because of judicial decisions to add new charges half-way through proceedings.

Simply put, the court has been making things up as it goes along.

The ICC claims to be victim-centred, yet Human Rights Watch has publicly criticised its ambivalence towards victim communities. It claims to bring "swift justice", but it has taken several years to bring the first accused to trial for allegedly using child soldiers.

The Nuremberg trials, which addressed infinitely more serious charges, were over within a year.

The ICC claims to be fighting impunity, yet it has afforded de facto immunity and impunity to several serial abusers of human rights who happen to be friends of the European Union and US.

Africa fought long and hard for its independence. It must reject this new "legal" colonialism. The ICC's double-standards and autistic legal blundering in Africa has derailed delicate peace processes, thereby prolonging devastating civil wars.

There is a clear lesson for countries in Africa and elsewhere: do not join the ICC and do not refer your country to the ICC.

The ICC does not have Africa's welfare at heart, only the furtherance of Western, especially European, foreign policy, and its own bureaucratic imperative to exist, to employ more Europeans and North Americans, and where possible, to continue to increase its budget.

Dr Hoile, an African scholar and consultant, is the author of The International Criminal Court: Europe's Guantanamo Bay?

Tsvangirai Misreading African "Silence"

And as Tsvangirai repeatedly makes a case for his Western allies' deceptively sweet values, he also parades the poor African statesman in him and how he misses his own complicity in the subjugation of the continent.

The Herald

By Tichaona Zindoga
WHEN Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was presented with the National Democratic Institute's W Averell Harriman Democracy Award in America early last month, he called for an end to what he called the "conspiracy of silence" among African leaders.
He said: "As African leaders we must end the conspiracy of silence that has often allowed repression to continue unchecked."
"We must acknowledge and respect the fundamentals of good governance, respect for the rule of law and property rights and the imperative to invest in developing our human capital.
"In doing so, we will unleash the full potential of our continent and ensure that Africa takes its rightful place in the world as a fully-fledged partner for progress, prosperity and stability," he continued.
A fortnight later, upon being conferred with an honorary doctorate by a South Korean university, he repeated this call.
According to reports, including one in his official website, Tsvangirai "urged African leaders to end the conspiracy of silence that has often allowed repression to continue unchecked.
"He reiterated the need to respect fundamentals of good governance, respect for the rule of law and property rights and the imperative to invest in developing human capital."
The striking similarity of the above occasions, both in letter and spirit is palpable.
Tsvangirai is being celebrated and feted in foreign countries for meeting the ideals, which conform to an American-set "global" agenda of democracy and human and property rights.
On both occasions, he chides his African counterparts -- none of whom have been so celebrated and feted in recent times -- for "complicity of silence".
In essence, African leaders have not received enough of the gospel of "good governance, respect for the rule of law and property rights" brought to them by America.
While Tsvangirai's impatience with African leaders is not without precedence, events have also shown that his Western-inspired misgivings with his brothers have been proven offside.
The case of the African Union in general and Sadc in particular and their involvement in Zimbabwe illustrates this point clearly.
Riding on the association with the West, Tsvangirai's MDC party only recently was calling all sorts of names to African leaders including describing Sadc as "a bunch of dictators".
But it was the very same leaders who in 2007 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania opened the way for dialogue in Zimbabwe leading to the formation of the Inclusive Government between Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations last year.
The Inclusive Government is predicated on the Global Political Agreement signed on September 15, 2008, whereof Sadc and the AU are guarantors.
It is beyond question a successful upshot of former South African President Thabo Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy", which Presidents Kgalema Monthlante and Jacob Zuma also followed.
This "quiet diplomacy" often came under fire from both the MDC and the West when the latter perceived Mbeki as not pushing enough for the "restoration of human rights in Zimbabwe".
"Restoration of human rights in Zimbabwe" was of course a euphemism for the removal of President Mugabe from power, which well fitted the overthrow Western gospel draped in the so-called human and property rights but hardly doing Africa any good.
On a state visit to the United Kingdom in March, President Zuma underscored the success of African effort in Zimbabwe by saying that despite criticism from the West, quiet diplomacy had yielded something in Zimbabwe while Western sanctions divided and caused untold suffering among Zimbabweans.
This declaration, well backed by the situation on the ground, arguably exposes the fatuity of Western involvement in Zimbabwe, along with Tsvangirai's discipleship.
And as Tsvangirai repeatedly makes a case for his Western allies' deceptively sweet values, he also parades the poor African statesman in him and how he misses his own complicity in the subjugation of the continent.
It is known that the good governance that the West speaks of goes nowhere beyond securing minority white interests, which has in the past led the West to support rogue and dictatorial regimes in Zaire, (now Democratic Republic of Congo) Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria, to name but a few.
In recent times, America has admired the likes of Prime Minister Raila Odinga -- who led a bloodbath in Kenya in 2007 following a contested election -- and Botswana's Seretse Khama Ian Khama, who has increasingly styled himself into a mini dictator.
The two leaders have also had the distinction of speaking against African interest in Zimbabwe to the extent of supporting military aggression against the innocent people of Zimbabwe.
All this is in the name of the so-called good governance, rule of law and property rights.
These Western virtues have a very disturbing undertone.
They are "good" and "right" only to the extent of perpetuating the dehumanising and subjugation of African peoples.
While African rights were negated, plundered and raped in the dispossession of land and other resources in the dark era of colonialism, efforts to redress and re-humanise people have been met with Western resistance with people like Khama, Odinga and Tsvangirai gleefully taking part.
The admiration these leaders have won in America and Europe is underpinned by their willingness to pawn precious African resources, and their people, to alien interests and their readiness to convert all people to the woollen plunder of the West. It is not about ensuring "that Africa takes its rightful place in the world as a fully-fledged partner for progress, prosperity and stability", as Tsvangirai preached.
The forces of plunder, subjugation and evil that are the Anglo-Saxon world do not subscribe to African progress, prosperity and stability.
The systems of slavery, colonialism, apartheid and neo-colonialism are enough testimony that according to the West, the "rightful" place of Africans is under their yoke.
The destabilisation that America and her allies have visited the continent, which was seen as early as the overthrow of Ghana's first president Kwame Nkrumah and modern Africa's founding father in 1966, gives away any hint of truth in Tsvangirai's statement.
This destabilisation has produced American romances with the likes of Mobutu and Moise Tshombe in Zaire, Angola's Jonas Savimbi, among other traitorous characters who have been presented to the African course of history.
While cherry-picking on the best human capital, which it continues to do to the present day, the West has never allowed Africa to develop its human capital through the destabilisation of the continent and murder of its sons and daughters.
With all this, it is a foregone conclusion that Africa will not be allowed to unleash its full potential, or become a fully-fledged partner for a progress of its own whose imperative is ownership of the wealth of its resources.
The partners that the West likes are the latter-day Savimbis and Mobutus feted in America and Europe for the price of the precious resources of the continent.
Unfortunately, this treacherous complicity with the enemy, which has allowed Western repression to continue unchecked, is coupled by some Africans' willingness to draw others into the web of evil.

Africans must not catch hell in two places

Yes democracy must never lose the concepts of freedom, liberties, human rights, fairness and justice, but with these must come economic freedom for Africa.

Wafawarova Writes

By Reason Wafawarova in SYDNEY, Australia
THE role of perception in world affairs is so central and significant that billions and billions of dollars are poured into propaganda systems each year to influence how people view events around them.

A colleague, brother, ardent follower and critic of this writer’s work, Taurai; asserts that there is a correlation between perception and vested interests inasfar as understanding political power is concerned.

In this essay, we are later going to look at an example of the perceptions that have been created and peddled around the personalities of President Mugabe and former South African president Nelson Mandela, the former largely seen as an enemy in the Western spheres while the later is viewed as that exemplary darling after which Africa must follow.

Taurai also noted in one of his feedbacks that vested interests seem to shape much of the perception and opinion around Liberation Movements — opinions that often tell of a retrogressive approach to governance.

Western politics on the other hand, are portrayed as founded in progression, and political parties that stand opposed to liberation parties in former colonies are often seen as progressive in Western political circles.

One can look at the Democratic Alliance in South Africa and the MDC in Zimbabwe, or Renamo in Mozambique.

Despite its popular support the ANC is already portrayed as a retrogressive party with a deadly potential to wreck South Africa, Zanu-PF is already crucified and labelled as a "dictatorial and kleptocratic party" and Frelimo had to ward off military aggression from Renamo as the West resolved to topple the Mozambican liberation party through a 14 year dissident war of ruin.

Perhaps we may have to start with the institution called the Church before we revisit perceptions in the arena of politics.

Traditionally, the Church’s major role has always been to propagate and encourage spirituality, ethics and rightful behaviour among people, and of course some would never leave out salvation.

Regardless of its divine stature, the Church is also a social institution and it has evolved over time such that the definition above cannot be described as fully conclusive.

Those working in the advertising industry know very well the power of emotion and feeling, and almost every advert is designed to bypass a person’s sober analytical and critical scrutiny.

When advertising, one seeks to speak directly to emotions so that the targeted person acts in terms of feelings instead of reason.

So the colonial Church that was brought as a collaborating tool to the goal of colonial conquest taught the African to be emotional and spiritual; and often these two concepts are confused to the exclusion of critical thinking.

The "emotional-spiritual state" that is devoid of critical thinking is nothing but a bogus state of mind. It is a kind of bogus state that allowed colonialists to manipulate some of our ancestors so that in many cases, they could not bring to bear on their everyday problems common sense and reasoning.

This is not the Church’s problem, but squarely the problem of how competing power centres can externally manipulate the institution of the Church.

So while the Church may see its primary role as maintaining spirituality, fostering an emotional-spiritual relationship with God, the earthly reality is that Church members are people who live on earth and that they are people who must feed and protect their children and protect their economic interests.

Marx Weber wrote that Protestantism and Capitalism had a correlation where it could be proven that the founding of Protestantism was linked to the advancement of Western Capitalism.

Even Catholicism was from the beginning related to certain economic structures.

This really means that the Church is not separated from money and economics and it means the African has the right to redefine the Church in ways that advance the African interests; the economic, social, political and spiritual interests.

This redefining means a departure from the colonial definition of the Church.

In fact, the African Independent Churches in Southern Africa, like the Apostolic Church (Mapositori) and the Zionist Church (Mazioni) were the first to depart from the orthodox colonial structures of the Church as they sought to safeguard the African economic interests fully.

Today we have a lot of African founded Pentecostal Churches like ZAOGA Forward In Faith, or the Family of God Churches, and many others across Africa, and these too departed from the colonial set up of the Church to seek more and more of the African reality in Christianity.

The idea has been to view the Church in the context of the African life and to find ways of preserving the Church’s spiritual and ethical mission while at the same time making sure that the Church enhances the African political, economic and social life.

People who are economically crushed and exploited are often weighed down with this sense of guilt, sin and inferiority.

The theology of Jesus Christ shows that he was crucified mainly because he struggled against the ideology that was coming out of the major religious establishment of his time, Judaism.

This establishment had an economic order and structure that forced some people into slavery and servitude (poverty) and it rationalised and idealised the practice as part of the Faith.

The African Church of today must restructure to enhance the material well being, not only of its members but also of the generality of the African population, while it carries out its spiritual and ethical function to rid society of deviance.

The Church as an economic unit can be an instrument of African ownership of African resources, lands and properties.

The Church is well structured for effective communication and organisation and the Church can build businesses and it can build distribution networks that can empower an entire continent, enriching the African population and creating markets for African produce abroad.

If, however, the perception of the Church is this narrow view that Christianity is only about being a spiritual people and we shun becoming "worldly" and only see ourselves as living well after we die — then we can be assured that we are going to catch hell in two places, on earth and after we die.

Just like the Church must manoeuvre as an institution to enhance economic development and the emancipation of the African people, a lot of other institutions must equally restructure to suit the African cause.

The African leader who after independence is convinced that the economic structure of Africa must hinge on Western investment and African cheap labour will be hailed as politically upright by the Western post-colonial domination doctrine, otherwise known as imperialism.

This is the African leader who, like the colonial orthodox Christian is convinced that happiness will come in the future, and as the colonial orthodox Christian respected the Church that was blind to African interests so this African leader respects a democracy that is blind to African interests.

The colonial Church created poor Africans and rich colonial settlers just like Judaism created rich and powerful Sadducees and Pharisees at the expense of poor servants and slaves.

In the same manner, we have a democracy that is being preached these days that is regressive and infantile.

It is a democracy that creates in Africa a population dependant on selling cheap labour to foreign investors, when they are not lining up for Western aid.

Democracy as an institution is not a bad idea, just like the Church is in principle a very good idea.

However, there is this danger that just like the Church was abused in history the institution of democracy is being abused grossly to promote and encourage the spread of Western interests for the benefit of Western economies and businesses — all at the expense of less developed nations.

A democracy that allows Apartheid Capitalists to perpetuate their economic advantage over the Black South African population is hailed as legendary reconciliation; and for not upsetting it President Nelson Mandela has already been immortalised even before his death.

He is not only a darling of the West, but he has become a brand after which the institution of democracy in Africa must be modelled.

The people of South Africa must rejoice in the eternal glory of Mandela’s legacy and that happiness must be expressed even in deep poverty.

Just like the Church must propagate spirituality, ethics and rightful behaviour, democracy must encourage liberties, freedoms, change in leadership, and capitalist economies based on cheap labour from less developed countries.

As South African President Jacob Zuma recently noted in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, "people do not eat democracy"; especially the type of democracy preached and funded by the West.

It is common knowledge that Cde Zuma is not viewed as the best disciple of Mandela and the Western scepticism over his leadership can be breathed in any conference room.

His close ties with the Zulu culture does not bring a lot of comfort to the tutors of democracy, just like his close links with the poor masses of South Africa is not really seen as the desired pattern of a democratic leader’s life. A democrat must be a friend of business and capital, and must by definition be an excellent architect of pacifying the poor masses.

President Zuma is however, a lot more acceptable as a democrat when compared to President Mugabe. This man was once a stalwart in the institution of Western democracy that he was even awarded a Knighthood by the Queen of England.

This is when he had white settler farmers occupying over 75 percent of Zimbabwe’s arable land, he had more than 400 British companies running industry in Zimbabwe on the strength of the cheap labour provided by hundreds of thousands of Zimbabwean workers, and he allowed these companies to keep the profits they made in Zimbabwe in European banks.

One does not serve the institution of Western democracy any better than that.

Well, President Mugabe lost his democrat icon status in Western eyes the day he decided that Zimbabweans needed to regain their stolen land that was being occupied by white settler farmers.

He became an instant devil and Morgan Tsvangirai was quickly created to keep the institution of Western democracy alive in Zimbabwe.

Tsvangirai was in Washington DC three weeks ago, receiving accolades and awards for excelling in "democratic" matters.

Of course, this he did by accepting Western backing in fighting President Mugabe.

His own publicly known excesses of using violence to cling to power at party level do not count for anything as long he provides hope of destroying the Mugabe legacy.

Tsvangirai must help reverse Mugabe’s "excesses" against Western democracy, namely the land reform program and the indigenisation and economic empowerment policies.

When Western interests were not threatened in Zimbabwe, a perception was created that President Mugabe was a shining democrat worth rewarding by Western awards.

When Mandela preached reconciliation and left Apartheid economic interests undisturbed he was hailed as a hero, and all South African leaders are being urged to emulate his every move while he was in office — of course in the name of the excellent institution of Western democracy.

A democracy that does not cater for Africa’s economic interests is like a Church that preaches happiness ever after death, ignoring that Church members need to eat and feed their children.

It is such a Church that will make people catch hell in two places: on earth and after death.

A democracy that only teaches Press freedom, human rights, free and fair elections and capitalist property rights, to the exclusion of economic rights, will make us catch hell here on earth and surely after we die as well. Heaven cannot be for stupid, gullible and docile people.

Democracy must create and build businesses, must feed the people, must educate our people, must empower our people economically, must free our people financially, must provide health for our people, and must protect the African economic interest.


We had African leaders fighting over European ideologies during the Cold War — one defending an ideology from the United States while the other was defending an ideology from Russia.

They forgot to base their ideologies upon a profound analysis of their own history and experience.

Today our leaders are fighting again over Western democracy and other foreign ideologies — all in the name of advocacy for abstract change.

We need an African-centred ideology, and that way we will do away with conflicts and self-destruction.