The Real Trouble with Zimbabwe

By Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh

This adage of ancient provenance is a heart-rending plea for justice to pour like the rain! It supplicated justice to deluge our world like the Noachian deluge of old did in the fertile minds of the ancient Jewish Yawhist-tradition writers; even if the pillars of heaven are to collapse in the process. And time has proven over and over again, that Truth is the grand essential for justice. Without truth, justice is eviscerated of meaning and significance. This piece is the contribution of our feeble voice to course of truth and justice. This is an inscription in time, recording for all eternity that we did not keep mum when the armada of international hypocrisy seduced global timidity to hawk cant and lies in place of truth.

What is the truth many would ask? Jesus the Christ, who laid claims to the godhead, proffered the immensity of his silence as the only veritable answer, when hypocrisy and political correctness personified in Pontius Pilate, threw that question at him in mockery of decency. We would have chosen to go the Christic way, proffering our silence to the immensity of political iniquity being committed in and with Zimbabwe, at the full glare of an emasculated global audience. We don’t blame the audience, we blame the malevolence of the imperial establishment resident in the capitals of the Industrial West, who shamelessly manufacture illusions, cook up lies and dissimulations to discredit whoever in obedience to his beliefs, try to better the lot of his people, against western exploitative manipulations.

Why are the Western establishment, and the Western media so interested in Zimbabwe? History has proven that these guys are never good Samaritans on a voyage of charity to help Africa get out of the predicament, which her contact with the West for the past 800 years imposed on her. So, do they love Zimbabwe so much that they are ready to do anything to save that country from political tyranny? History recorded with accuracy that these guys supported a White-tyranny that lasted for donkey years, until the guerrillas led by people like Nkomo, Mugabe and others made further occupation economically inefficient. History equally showed imperialism as a metaphysic of diametrical exploitation, which rolled over peoples, sacked cultures and plundered civilizations to compel rivers of wealth to flow in the metropole.  British wealth was constructed upon the dead bodies and defunct souls of many cultures in Africa and Asia. Britain like every other imperial power turns virtue on its head canonizing her pirates and plunders. Spain, though a retired imperialist, rented Pizzaro and her bunch of buccaneers to vaporize cultures and great civilizations like that of the Incas in Mesoamerica.

Is the West not a cradle of democracy, and are they not democrats who want to help Zimbabwe on the path to democracy, which has allegedly been destroyed by Mugabe? Democracy was never a Western invention. My ancestors in the Igbo heartland lived and breathed a democratic and egalitarian society, which was superlatively functional and attendant to the needs of the society, when ancient Greece was slumbering in primitivity torn by tribal wars between Athenians and Spartans. Igboukwu bronze discoveries dating back to much earlier as 450 BC are footnotes to this.

Democracy like all other allegations imposed on Greece as its origin is an impious accusation and a capital lie peddled by a racist tradition bent on painting everything bad as black and everything good as white. Greek democracy was a pale imitation of the organized societies transported to Egypt from the heartland of Africa through Nubian trading roots, which the Greeks copied like they copied African philosophy, which they encountered in Egypt. The West never invented democracy and they are never democrats. They are hypocrites. The West is not a cradle of democracy. Democracy is a pan-humanic achievement with seeds and fruits in and across the spectrum of so many human societies. It is the logical conclusion of the human desire to preserve himself in being; in a functional society free from let and fear.

I wonder how these guys can presume to give what they do not possess in its ontology. In America today, fundamental freedoms are circumscribed to a degree that makes mockery of democracy. A citizen could be arrested and kept in a cage at the will of the state in invocation of anti-terror laws, which is a gimmick designed to fashion and consolidate a culture of fear in the citizenry, while the elite go about their normal business of exploiting the rest of us for the benefit of a few. The man that signed some of these obnoxious laws into effect has his father trading and doing business with the Saudis as a prominent member of the Carlyle group; an elitist corporation of war-mongers, who peddle weapons and foment wars in order to sell them. And this state- Saudi Arabia -is supposed to be the birthplace of many enemy combatants who plunged planes and people's life into the WTC to mock Western hypocrisies.

Why would Zimbabwe attract such an accusation that it is not democratic; and the West is doing everything including financing insurrections in an independent country, to achieve that inglorious aim? By the last check, Saudi Arabia is not a democracy, and does not pretend to be. And the Western media are not falling over each other to paint the house of Saud as the great Satan. In spite of the fact that 19 Saudi citizens took part in hijacking planes and ramming them into the world trade centre like a huge phallus fucking America up, this country was never classified in the axis of evil, which is this establishment’s favourite designation for many people who aspire to freedom they way the understand it, which violates the conceptual schemes of the metropole.

In spite of all that is peddled by the West establishment and media, the problem in Zimbabwe is not Robert Mugabe. The problem in Zimbabwe is Western hypocrisy. The problem is racism that is eugenic as well as economic. Racism has not ended in spite of the lip service paid to it in the Western Media. You can ask FOX about their views on Barack Obama. Geraldine Ferraro is my witness here. Britain and her allies are funding insurrections by financing MDC and other lackeys to be a confrontational opposition to Mugabe. This is not the first time that the Western establishment are financing coups and putsches around the world. The Iran-contra scandal in which the Reagan administration used Oliver North as a fall guy, the murder of Allende in El Salvador, the brutal, cold blooded murder of Patrice Lumumba in Congo; the setting of Sadaam Hussein with non-existing weapons of mass destruction, are all perfect examples of this.

If you doubt me, ask the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies. If this attitude of violating a country’s sovereignty is acceptable to the western establishment, why did they promulgate laws trailing and freezing finances suspected of having links with terrorist? But they are financing terrorism and disobedience against constituted authority in Zimbabwe. Since what is good for the goose is equally good for the gander; are we then right to ask Osama bin laden to start funding the Liberals in America or the GOP to topple the government of George Bush, and install his lackey in power? Should we ask him to resurrect Al Zarqawi for him to arrange funding the labour party in Britain and installing a lackey with terrorist sympathies in power? Should we ask Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof to resurrect themselves and reinvent their indiscretions in the Green party in Germany? In justice, same situations should be treated exactly the same way. If the Western establishment deems it fit to terrorise populations, whose governments want to revise an injustice perpetrated on them, what then should be the lot of these establishments and their populations as well?  I would not recommend terrorism.

No man deserves death at the hands of another under whatever pretext. I would recommend education. Western citizens are like human beings everywhere. They share the pain and agonies of every other human population ruled by elitist leeches, with aristocratic pretences. They should be shown the hypocrisies of their government, which the governments sugar-coats with democratic rhetoric. They should be given an alternative source of information different from those peddled by pseudo-independent establishment media like CNN and BBC, who were ontologically designed to propound and promote American and British propaganda respectively. That is why this piece is written for the E-media; for the internet, which is a technological proof that tyranny will never overshadow human freedom to access and transmit information.

That there is hyper galloping inflation in Zimbabwe today is thanks to the sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe because Mugabe took action to revoke centuries of injustice perpetrated on his people by Western imperialism. Children are dying at their mothers breasts in Zimbabwe because milk does not flow anymore from the breasts of their half-starved mothers. The Western establishment sees these and similar human tragedies unfold daily, but skip over it. They do so because the atrocity in Zimbabwe is their trick designed to deal with Zimbabweans for abiding Mugabe a second more, after he fell out of favour with his western masters. They engineered it as a gimmick to bring Mugabe’s government on its knees and force his people to kick him out. But they underestimated the resiliency of a determined man who feels aggrieved at the monumental injustice that British colonialism wrecked on Zimbabwe and wanted to keep profiting from, ad infinitum.

No matter what happens in Zimbabwe, it will never revise the fundamental injustice, which British conspiracy admixed with international hypocrisy has inflicted on the people of Zimbabwe. Mugabe may be a tyrant and one of the African dinosaurs who couldn’t make his country fly against the insurmountable odds placed in his path by the colonial legacy, but that does not justify what the West is doing to Zimbabwe. On the scores of justice, this is screaming injustice, and a placard of Western political callousness and conceit. Rome peddled such inanities in her heydays as the world capital. But, today, ancient Rome exists only in history books, which buried her inglorious imperators like Caligula and Nero as the greatest summaries of wickedness. All the world kings of today, who feel that Africa is the playground of their greed, it would come home to their historical memories that the continent will outlive their inglorious memories.

The problems in Zimbabwe and in the Nigerian Niger Delta are footnotes of British imperialism, which has a metaphysic of exploitation. Some Western commentators, opinion mongers, and some prominent Africans have been rented and placed on imperialistic payrolls to launder the neo-imperialistic image and revise colonial history in the light of today. Many of them have been essaying to exonerate Western neo-imperialistic devices from taking their rightful blame for the African predicament. But failure has greeted their enterprise. Their job metaphysic was rooted in falsehood. And since lies can never fly, they would never succeed. These hired guns peddle a version of history which is allergic to the facts. They go about their revisionist charges with the slogans “we cannot blame the West for Africa’s problems four decades after the ‘official’ end of colonialism’. Or other parts of the world like India and Singapore were equally colonies, but have succeeded in gaining admittance into the halls of the development”.

But the major loophole in their enterprise is their convenient forgetfulness of the strategic designs of the version of colonialism inflicted upon Africa and other peoples of colour. These mercenary minstrels embezzle the fact that nowhere in history was the worst mixtures of eugenic and economic exploitation arrantly experimented upon like it was done in Africa. The last vestiges of it last till the late 80s in apartheid South Africa. They sidestepped the fact that the version of colonialism practiced in Africa eviscerated African psyche and culture; kidnapped our gods to grace their museums as artefacts to reward their plundering enterprise and mock our technological inferiority; plucked our meanings and significances out of the sky, desecrated our social relationships and epistemic authorities; and bequeathed an eternal epistemic fluidity, which conferred African cultures with a cultural identity crises that has spelt the end of their relevance to Africans.

To that end, Africans cannot define themselves with any aucthotonous guideposts. Africans are not traditional or modern. Colonialism reduced Africans to a conglomeration of complexes; a mixture of a conceptual flux, which has continued to teleguide Africa’s developmental trajectory and destiny till date. That was not all; colonial masters on departing the continent groomed a crop of ideologically deficient houseboys, who like Pavlovian dogs were congenitally engineered to listen to the directives of the master in a neo-colonial arrangement that replaced white colonialists with their black collaborators. And anyone who rises against the grotesque incompetence and rapacious recklessness of these collaborating Sonderkommandos incurs the instant wrath of the colonial masters. This was why Lumumba incurred Western wrath for daring to question the status quo in the Congo. Mandela brought the wrath of the global apartheid establishment on his head for refusing to die quietly in an evil system directed against his people. Salvadore Allende had to die because he dared to refuse taking directives from the Western establishment. Aguiyi Ironsi had to die in Nigeria because the British intelligence feared that power had slipped out of the grip of their anointed servants. And the list goes on.

Mugabe is not a saint. He is a political dinosaur who has overstayed his welcome. His peers are all politically extinct. He has refused to go; refusing to take a bow when the ovation was at its highest pitch. To that end, he transformed himself from a freedom fighter into a thug. But any roll call of lying, jingoistic tyrants will rank George Bush and Tony Blair first, before Mugabe. Mugabe is today being painted as the very next thing to Lucifer. But those who are hurting and blockading Zimbabwe with violent sanctions, while singing alleluia verses in their churches on Sundays and giving us hoax homiletics on democracy and good government, are seen as great arsenals of democracy! What impudence! What sanctimonious hypocrisy. Mugabe used to be a showcase of a guerrilla turned democrat. He was marketed as such in the Western conceptual scheme. It lasted as long as he did not rock the racial applecart, which was a real albatross to social justice in Zimbabwe; namely the whites-2 percent of the population owning over 85 percent of all arable lands in Zimbabwe; while the blacks over 90 percent of the population making do with only 15 percent. Once Mugabe took unilateral action to redress that injustice after the British government reneged on their 1980 Lancaster agreement, he fell out of favour with the establishment ogre of Great Britain.

The problem with Zimbabwe was manufactured in Whitehall. And Britain is manipulating all her allies to join her in isolating Zimbabwe and bringing Mugabe to his knees. The allies did not disappoint. They responded with the promptitude of a herd of unthinking sheep. British allies all banded together and swooped in for the kill with their sanctions. But many Africans are not sold on this round of Western hypocrisy. We have been veteran witnesses to such dummies. The other day, Mandela celebrated his 90 year on, 27 of which was spent in incarceration for daring an evil establishment, which was supported by those who wants Mugabe’s head today. Many Western heads of state and governments were falling over themselves to identify with the occasion and legacies of this colossus. These were heirs to the inglorious bastards whose idiocies, active collaboration and hypocritical silence sent Mandela to prison in the first instance. For 27 years, Mandela rotted in a prison fashioned by a white supremacist enclave, which has America, Britain and most other Western nations as trading and diplomatic partners. They did nothing to release an innocent man from suffering for his beliefs and the rights of his people to live in their land with dignity. They allowed him to suffer and rot there.

The Western establishment labelled him a terrorist. It was not until this year 2008 that the United States of America removed Mandela’s name from the lists of terrorists forbidden to enter the US; eighteen years after this great son of Africa stepped out of prison to lead his country with courage, dignity, and fairness. These hypocrites never leaned on apartheid South Africa to democratize because they fear that in a democracy, which is a game of numbers, the Black Africans will triumph and trump every other race in any election. At this point in history, democracy took the backdoor of Reagan’s and Thatcher’s administrations’ policies. Today, the same Whitehall and Washington which abided these monumental hypocrisies have now donned new apparels to advertise themselves as purveyors of democracy; simply because Mugabe took away Black lands from white occupiers and gave it back to the original owners, after the UK reneged on its commitments to the 1980 Lancaster agreement.

Some would try to exonerate the heirs to loot from the crimes of their buccaneering fathers. I would love to too. But the issues are that whoever profits by crime is guilty of it. If one inherits the proceeds of his father’s crimes, he should equally inherit the blames accruing thereto. If one fails to restore the legacies of crime bequeathed to him, he should then be ready to battle with the discontent of those wrongfully deprived of their estate. The Germans of my generation are still labouring under the weight of the Nazi legacy. This is to the extent that any German, who criticises Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, runs the risk of being labelled an anti-Semite. Any German who attempts to coax a positive lesson out of the Nazis’ megalomanic enterprise, runs the risk of not only being kicked out his job, but also making himself a loathsome social figure. Go ask Eva Hermann, who was sacked for trying to praise the Nazi family policies.

But the British have paid no reparation to anyone for the rapacious plunder of their countries in the name of colonialism. They have not even apologised for that historical crime and indiscretion. That means they have not seen the wrong in the action of their ancestors as to repudiate it. This is to say that given the opportunity that they would repeat it. And repeat it, they are doing! This is why even after granting independence to many African countries, they never actually left these countries to find their path through the maze of complexities which they inherited from an exploitative colonial master. Britain engineered power in Nigeria into the laps of the conservative elements who never desired independence for the country in the first place.

And this power bloc has been the albatross of Nigeria’s development till date. Britain left Nigeria in 1960, but Shell BP, a British multi-national is still the greatest player in the Nigeria oil and gas industry; as well as a British shadow government in Nigeria. Shell has been indicted of fomenting conflicts in the Niger Delta. This is a footnote of what obtains all over Africa. Through channels such as these, the imperial metropole seeks to continue teleguiding Africa’s destiny, such is the case in Zimbabwe today with the MDC. They use these channels to incite and finance the overthrow of government’s unsympathetic to British and other imperial interests.

Africans should ensure that instead of Zimbabwean’s voting out Mugabe, the English should pass a vote of no-confidence on their government. Instead of starving Zimbabweans into submission, Americans should be thankful that George Bush would not be on the ballot come December. But one doubts if the policies will change with the change of governments. These prejudices run too deep to be washed away by the change of governments. Africans must continue on the path of self-determination. They must rise up and reject Western perfidious arm-twisting. Africa has suffered enough. The roll of our devastation saw stops at the slave trade, the colonization processes, and the neo-colonial recalcitrance in Africa.

Ours is a call to all men of goodwill. All we need is a change of attitudes. Africa needs a media outlet, which will compete and neutralise the lies peddled about Africa in Western conceptual schemes by Western media conglomerates like CNN and BBC. The Arabs have done that with Al Jazeera. We should educate ourselves to the dangers of swallowing the manufactured consents and opinions peddled as facts in and through these mediums. The Western establishment should leave Zimbabwe alone. Like Bob Marley, the august reggae philosopher said: Only Africans can liberate Zimbabwe! This inheres in the origin of the problem, which is Western hypocrisy in its consolidated and convoluted dimensions.

If the West wants to impose democracy on the rest of the world, they should know that they lack the credibility necessary for such undertakings. They have very terrible historical precedents to withdraw from. Democracy has not come to Iraq after all the empty promises and lies of President Bush and his “coalition of the willing” stooges. The West has not equally deemed fit to impose democracy on Saudi Arabia or China. The establishment myth, popularized by Amartya Sen for which he got a Nobel prize-an establishment reward for its faithful servants- that development can only happen in a democracy has been exploded by the rampaging advance of China. The Chinese, subsisting under a very heavy communist autocracy have been able to achieve what Western conceptual schemes claim as their exclusivity. So a country can equally develop its own standards of governance which must not take its moments about Western views of democracy, and still arrive at the harbours of development and social felicity for its citizens.

Britain should leave Mugabe alone and stop financing terrorism in Zimbabwe. If an English politician is to take money from Osama bin laden to run for office, believe me, he would be hauled to Old Bailey, where he would be answering to treason charges. If that is to be in George Bush’s America, Guantanamo without trial would be his abode. Enough of this hypocrisy! It is sickening! Zimbabwe today is a testament that BBC, CNN and other media outlets that depend on them for information can never be trusted. They are simply mouthpieces of the Western establishment bent on world domination at the expense of the poor.

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Responses

Emergency Rally in Support of Zimbabwe July 3, Harlem—Thursday, July 3, 2008, the December 12th Movement and Friends of Zimbabwe are holding an emergency meeting at the National Black Theater, 125th Street & Fifth Avenue, to discuss the recent elections in Zimbabwe.  Just back from observing the elections, Viola Plummer and Omowale Clay of the December 12th Movement will be joined by a host of Pan Africanists in support of Zimbabwe and in opposition to the US/UK led campaign to isolate and destabilize Zimbabwe.

As Africa seeks to consolidate and move from political independence to economic independence, Zimbabwe is leading the way through it's fight to regain sovereignty over natural resources.  And it is paying the price - US/UK sanctions have played havoc with the economy and a daily barrage of media attacks are laying the groundwork for intervention. 

For further information call (718) 398-1766 and come to the meeting Thursday, July 3rd, at the National Black Theater, 125th Street & Fifth Avenue in Harlem. Press Release June 28, 2008 (718) 398-1766 For immediate release

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Zimbabwe: Place of dreams, Copy of horrors—War or peace. One does not wish war for one’s country but I reluctantly say that given present levels of propaganda abstractions of Zimbabwe, reality could very well only obtrude and reassert through this very bloody business.

The MDC and its masters are aware they will lose the run-off. They have started to prepare the world for a rejection of results of the run-off. They are also toying with the idea of war — proxy war using the MDC and a few African countries harbouring different grievances against Zimbabwe. This, not claims of local violence, is what will bring about a real post-election crisis. And only then will the world realise Mugabe is not alone. In the meantime, Zimbabwe’s friends need to reach and encompass Zimbabwe the real country, not Zimbabwe the horror copy of Anglo-Saxony propaganda calculations. Icho!—AllAfrica

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a brief defense of mugabe—I read the Morgan Tsvangirai Interview (AmandlaPublishers) with an open mind. And I'm unable to gather from Morgan how he can help the Zimbabwe people, especially with his support of a trickle down theory of prosperity for which we have been victims in the US since the 1980s and our economy has been in a steady decline especially from the perspective of the poor and especially of the black poor. Maybe Morgan is a good and well-meaning man. But I think he is either naive or a stooge of the West. Morgan points out the extraordinary inflation that exists in Zimbabwe. He claims that it results solely from "economic and political mismanagement in Zimbabwe." Common sense tells me that is not true. He attempts to deceive. So for me he is not the answer that the people of Zimbabwe need.

Chinweizu responds to Morgan's charge in this essay Black Africa's duty to help Zimbabwe defeat sanctions

Most of us in the USA are dismayed by the events taking placing in Zimbabwe. Clearly, there has been a low-level international war going on in that sad country for almost a decade, especially after the expropriations of land from the British landholders who stole it from the Zimbabwean people hundreds of years ago and probably even more recently. This expropriation has been at the center of contention.
 
Britain and the US have amassed all of their media and economic power against Zimbabwe and they have used their financial resources to not only embargo Zimbabwe but initiate a proxy war; they have used great financial resources to raise up and sustain an opposition that has no more answers to the problems of poverty than the present government, other than a capitulation to Western imperial might.
 
For these reasons, we at ChickenBones have shunned and denounced this Western promoted anti-Mugabe propaganda, which can be likened to that against Cuba, but much more racist. We are not saying that Mugabe is an angel. We are saying that Western interference and destablization in Zimbabwe have made that situation worse. Our position like that of Chinweizu is that Western powers should back off and allow the people of Zimbabwe to work out their problems in a peaceful manner.—Rudy

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Greetings
Whereas I agree with the comments of both of you and Chinweizu - the MDC leader is the worse type of puppet - please pause for a moment and read Mbeki's comments attached, which in my view are spot on, and identify the errors of ZANU-PF—B.F.Bankie

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Mbeki's prescient warning to Bob—A scathing critique of President Robert Mugabe and his ruling Zanu-PF written by President Thabo Mbeki sheds new light on the South African leader's private view of the Zimbabwean crisis. . . . Mbeki also accuses Mugabe of eroding democratic practices within his own ranks. "This is what has elevated the 'war veterans' to the position they now occupy as the 'true' representative of the revolutionary project in Zimbabwe. The war veterans have achieved a level of autonomy that further weakens the capacity of the party of the revolution to influence and lead the masses of the people."

He accuses the veterans of attracting the "lumpenproletariat" -- criminal elements -- into its ranks and tells Zanu-PF to distance itself from them. Mbeki suggests that Zimbabwe does not have the strength to confront and defeat the UK and that a conflictual relationship will discourage the developed world from helping to resolve Zimbabwe's land question. He suggests that Zanu-PF soften its critical stance on the IMF because "in reality, it cannot do without support and assistance from the IMF".

Zimbabwe cannot afford to "end up in a situation of isolation, confronted by an array of international forces she cannot defeat, condemned to sink into an ever-deepening social and economic crisis", he writes. Mail & Guardian

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I agree with Mbeki by half. That is, Mbeki has been forced into a tight corner with very few if any alternatives but capitulation (regime change). That is a non-starter and has created the situation we now see. The UK and the USA must make an offer by which Mugabe can come out the corner. I am certain Mugabe would be happy to come out the corner into which he has been driven. It is not a place that he desires or planned for. As long as the extreme alternative is the MDC leader, we will indeed have a situation that worsens—Rudy

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Dear Rudy, I am employed by the The Kush Institution in the Office of the President of South Sudan. I have worked for many African governments. I notice in the contributions on Zimbabwe many talk in fantastic terms. Mbeki is the Head of the South African state. He clearly has genuine respect for Mugabe and was giving confidential advise to a Brother. Like any other Head of State he carries the responsibilities of state, but to think he has caved-in to Western pressure is not correct.

Whether we like it or not a state has to have relations with the IMF. In Southern Africa, due to the history, a state needs some level of understanding with powers such as Britain, the US, etc. This does not mean dictation. It's called real politic. Zimbabwe is being crushed because, having seized the land, it was unable to maintain the normal balance with the great powers. Also at times Mugabe, I thought, was unnecessarily provocative. He was in fact baited.

Circumstances will not improve in the Zimbabwe economy unless normalcy is achieved. This will require a working relationship with MDC. The problems, as I see it, are Tsvangirai is a puppet and Mugabe is getting old and I do not see an alternative as tough as Mugabe in ZANU-PF. The land relations have to be kept as is. No compromise on that.—Bankie (Juba, South Sudan)

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In The Kingdom of This World, the great Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier  writes of the farce that became Haiti. Through the eyes of Ti Noel, the main character, we see all too clearly how strong men ride upon the backs of the people as though they were so many oxen driven before the lash. The book is a magnificent work of art. But the essence of its meaning is to make us ponder when the cry of the people is transformed from "We are the revolution" to the bombastic shout of the tyrant and strong man to "I am the revolution!" This is what we have in Mugabe. All the land reform in the world will not cover this up. For what good has the land reform done? Has it filled the marketplace or the bellies of the starving? I think not. The day that Mugabe is removed from office will be a day of triumph for the people of Zimbabwe! I make salat for that day. I wish the people of Zimbabwe freedom from all tyranny present and future!—amin sharif

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All governments are ruthless, as well as the opposition of the MDC, backed by Britain. The thing is that Mugabe and his party are better organized and have the guns. I do not sympathize with the MDC. It is no more representative of the true interest of Zimbabwe than ZANU, probably less. I expected what has occurred. ZANU’s actions are no more of a farce than the oppositional MDC. What I fear is an all out military intervention by Britain and its allies and the installment of stooges as we have in Iraq.

I have no problem in stating that Mugabe and his government are tyrannical, nor that the US and British governments are tyrannical, nor that most governments on the globe are tyrannical. Democracy is a farce and hypocritical everywhere. So I have problems arguing the virtues of democracy, that is, rule by the people, which is nowhere I can discover.

I find it difficult to point out one head of state who is not a "rat." That's at home and abroad.  If we are speaking of people (rats) who participate in causing their people suffering by refusing to relinquish the reins of power to those most suited, as you have pointed out, that is a complex determination in Zimbabwe, and in previous instances in African and elsewhere. I have heard no adequate defense of the leader of the MDCI have heard no adequate defense of the leader of the MDC. If I were in Mugabe's shoes, I would find it awfully difficult giving in to such a man, such an upstart like Morgan Tsvangirai, however I might appear in the Western media. 

Mugabe is not the problem. The crux of this problem begins with British imperialism and the present crisis is an extension of external intervention into Zimbabwean affairs. It is not that I "support" Mugabe. My emphasis always has been that I do not support the MDC opposition which is supported financially and politically by Britain and her allies. I respect Mugabe for holding the line against this opposition. Better men than I have sought a solution to the crisis. I do not know what the adequate response other than that Britain and her allies back off  their sanctioning which hurts the people more than the government which has dug in its heels.—Rudy

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Mugabe Sworn In After Discredited Vote—Just hours after electoral officials said Mugabe won Friday's presidential runoff, which observers said was marred by violence and intimidation, the 84-year-old leader sounded a conciliatory note. "Sooner or later, as diverse political parties, we shall start serious talks," he said in a speech following his swearing-in. He also had promised talks on the eve of the vote. . . . Mugabe, Zimbabwe's leader since independence from Britain in 1980, was expected at an African Union summit that opens Monday in Egypt, where he was to face fellow African leaders who want him to share power with his main rival, Morgan Tsvangirai. . . .

In addition to China, both Russia, also a permanent veto-wielding council member, and elected member South Africa have opposed action on Zimbabwe, saying the situation is an internal matter.

Mugabe was once hailed as a post-independence leader committed to development and reconciliation. But in recent years, he has been accused of ruining Zimbabwe's economy and holding onto power through fraud and intimidation. AOL

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Zimbabwe and the Question of Imperialism: A Discussion—Well obviously what is happening in Zimbabwe is quite tragic and I would hope some of the sympathy that is extended to Zimbabwe could be extended as well to other African nations that do not have white minorities. For example, the statement condemning or questioning the Zimbabweans elections emerged from Swaziland, a South African nation that is one of the last absolute monarchies on this small planet. Some might well question why isn’t Swaziland’s human rights situation being interrogated and investigated? A scant year ago in Nigeria, the continent’s giant, you had shambolic elections, had hundreds killed yet that barely registered a blip on the international media.

At least not in the North Atlantic. Many talk, perhaps understandably, about the fact the President Mugabe has served as President since 1980, but what about Omar Bongo of Gabon, a close ally of the U.S, an oil-rich country in West Africa, which of course, he has served as president since 1967? 13 years before Mugabe came into power. I mean, I could go on in this vain, but I think the fact that thousands were killed in Zimbabwe in the 1980’s and yet, he received a virtual knighthood from Queen Elizabeth and received an honorary degree from Massachusetts, and yet, today in 2008, he is a subject of international scorn after of course he expropriates some white farmers, really speaks of profound racism in terms of how this issue has been covered in the North Atlantic media. . . .

Well, I think that president Mugabe is a force to be reckoned with in Zimbabwe. And I agree with those leaders in the region who feel that he and his party must be contended with if there is to be a settlement of this controversy in Zimbabwe. I should also say that with regard to professor Campbell, I’m here not to carry a brief on OPS, but they have argued they did not move on land reform before 1994, i.e. the date of the South African elections, so as not to unsettle the situation in neighboring South Africa, which of course has outstanding land claims of its own. We all know there are more white farmers killed in South Africa than have been killed in Zimbabwe. And likewise, there are outstanding land claims in neighboring Namibia as well. I think it’s understandable why there has been a focus on on Zanu PF, but standing in the wings of the opposition of the MDC and sadly, unfortunately, there has not been considerable focus on them such as their leaders, Roy Bennet, a top leader, a former major land owner in Zimbabwe who of course throttled an African leader on the floor of the Zimbabweans parliament—I would of thought that kind of behavior would have ended in independence in 1980.

You have other leading Rhodesians in the leadership of MDC. One thing that worries many of us is that if MDC does come to power, there will be a split and quite frankly, they will pave the way for the rise of certain retrograde elements like Roy Bennet come back into power. In some ways, MDC, a trade union-led movement, is akin to solidarity in Poland which of course paved the way for the present right wing in Poland to come to power in Warsaw. So we have to be careful when we try to butt in to the internal affairs of a sovereign state. I think our energies would be best served by putting pressure on this government here in Washington and its comical sidekick in London. —Gerald Horne, , author of From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War Against Zimbabwe, 1965-1980.

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I am sick of all the excuses people make with regard to Mugabe and the rest of those ruthless African dictators in the Congo, Sudan, Swaziland, Nigeria, etc. Enough is enough.—Miriam

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I am unaware of those who are making excuses. Our response is much more dynamic. My intent is to provide some context and other views  than that of the corporate media by which to view Mugabe and other African leaders. Surely, I do not desire anyone to tolerate excuses in my presentation or in those of others. But I do not consider it enough to be indignant based on the views presented in the propaganda of CNN and BBC, or the NYTimes.

I am presently reading a manuscript on the former Nigerian leader Obansanjo, who is certainly no less worse than Mugabe. But Bush held his hand and walked about smiling, not too long ago, and he's been going around to other African states for several years doing the same thing. The point that Horne made is valid. Why one dictator or authoritarian leader is more tasteful than the other when it comes to the US and Britain?

If as an educator you do not wish to pursue those questions because you are exhausted, okay fine. But this is no time to get sick and indignant. This is the time to dig and ask more questions, like what is going on with these African states and with these authoritarian figures? What is their relationship to the West? What chances realistically do African peoples have to catch up to Western development and consumption? Are authoritarian figures really the problem? Are some Western stooges and others not? Why is one more favored than another? What is the responsibility of those of us in the diaspora?

The region below the Sahara is becoming increasingly more important than its post-colonial status of the last twenty to thirty years. With the development of AFRICOM it is nearly as important as the Middle East because of First World desires for its vast resources, including oil. The vulnerability of African countries and its leaders and a need for intervention will occur more frequently on the front pages of The New York Times. African peoples are a threat. They want what we have. They want a consumption rate of 32, which we have. Now they are at 1 or below. All of us cannot have it without someone losing.

Call Mugabe what you will—ass, dinosaur, and more—the havoc he has wreaked is minor compared to that of our own president, and the century of those before him that we teach our children to love, admire, and emulate. Let us not over blow the threat he poses, as we did with the executed Iraqi leader Hussein. The damage done subsequently to his overthrow to that sad country is worse than when he was in power—Rudy

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Horne is extremely meticulous.  Probably the best Marxist scholar currently on the Pan-African scene.   No question about his seriousness and competency.  He has immersed himself in archival work and brought many hidden facts to light.  He is not a huckster, nor a vacant "public intellectual," but a good old-fashioned Marxist, and thoroughly deserving of his Distinguished Professorship at Houston.  I found this interview at the following link.  http://www.kintespace.com/rasx36.html    You will find a picture of this serious brother at http://vi.uh.edu/faculty/profiles/horne.html

I have been to Zimbabwe only once, and that was almost a quarter of a century ago.  In my view, Mugabe is both a villain and a fool, but Horne's points deserve consideration. There was an inflammatory and unfair editorial about African politics in The New York Times July 1, 2006 by Nicholas D. Kristof, If Only Mugabe Were White.  Has Kristof forgotten the intervention by Tanzania in Uganda, the restoration of Obote, and the unanticipated tragic sequel?  

I know Horace Campbell.   He was one of the most steadfast opponents of Idi Amin, having visited Uganda at the time and witnessed the situation with horror.   Can you give me the link for Horace's article? Thanks for the work you are doing here.  You too Rudy deserve credit for having raised necessary questions about the Zimbabwe situation.—Wilson

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I'm at a meeting with Asante and we had an extensive discussion about this. He had not seen the DemocracyNow interview but he is adamant that Mugabe represents the best choice for the protection of the people of Zimbabwe. He lived and worked in Zimbabwe for a period of time and has maintained close ties with people there. Horne also has a great book on Blacks and Mexico.—Joyce 

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Dear Rudy, Often behind the story there is a tale. You probably don't know that Horace and Tajudeen were once friends with ZANU-PF. But the tide turned. Horace wrote a book about Zimbabwe's military intervention, along with Angola and Namibia, in the Congo to support Kabila. After that he was persona non grata in Zimbabwe. Since then, in my view, his line on the country has been hostile. He cannot speak for me and my friends on Zimbabwe, not after his support for Wamba and others in the eastern DRC. I found the intervention last week of Campbell's and Kwayana on Zimbabwe, speaking for "progressive Pan-Africanists" badly timed and distasteful. They speak for themselves.

I have accessed Horne's book. It has some interesting and obscure information.—Bankie

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Rudy,  I'm not familiar with Gerald Horne's analysis on Zimbabwe, but I question how much of Mugabe's antidemocratic stance can be blamed on white minorities in Zimbabwe and colonial pawns among Zimbabwe's black neighbors. His brutal method of "ending" poverty in Harare -- burning and bulldozing slums -- is hardly the work of an enlightened despot. And his blaming whites for everything seems to me the idee fix of a proud old revolutionary who has long outlived his usefulness to his people. 

The following paragraph from today's NY Times editorial on "China's Games" has its parallel, I think, in Mugabe's worldview -- based originally on fact, but hermetically sealed against change: "In junior high and high school here, two semesters of history instruction focus on the humiliation of China by Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and the United States during the last centuries. International criticism is described as a continuation of this legacy, and for other countries to condemn the regime is to disparage the Chinese people. Foreign criticism strengthens domestic loyalty to the regime, so the threat of a boycott of the Olympics in August only bolsters nationalism."

Really, what solace or sense of justice can we derive from Robert Mugabe's overturning elections at the barrel of a gun? Zimbabweans deserve better. I would trust their voices a lot further than Horne's or other outsiders'.—David

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The problem seems to be the nature of the opposition, MDC and its leaders. In essence I do not see that Mugabe has done anything worse than Obasanjo in Nigeria, or other African heads of state. Nor worse than our own president, especially in Iraq. Yet Bush walks with these tyrants hand in hand, smiling.
 
I agree that the masses of African peoples deserve better. We deserve better than the last eight years. I am uncertain handing power over to MDC will assure that they will be better in the long run. I am uncertain an Obama will be better. My best advice is that Britain and US back off their sanctions and allow the Zimbabweans to resolve their own national disputes.

Zimbabwean voices are not as singular as some wish to make them. Certainly, there are millions who do not see MDC as a means for Zimbabwe to retain its sovereignty.—Rudy

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 Rudy, I don't rely on CNN, NBC or the other Western media for my information on African countries and their leaders. I read the words of African writers, of Black journalists who have lived and worked in those countries for many years, as well as the analyses of my friends and relatives, many of whom have lived and still live in such countries as Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Cameroon, Nigeria, etc. Also, I had many conversations with the poor people—victims of Mugabe—during my trip to Zimbabwe. They are truly suffering, while we pontificate.—Miriam

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Miriam, there are always victims in political struggle. On all sides. That's real politics, not armchair theorizing on the necessity of the good.
 
We have poor people suffering here in America—in jails and out of jails—and in greater numbers than in Zimbabwe. My question to you and other anti-Mugabe enthusiasts, What is your solution to the problem? Capitulation is a non-starter. MDC is not an answer.  The poor, if you read the MDC leader's interview with Amandla!, will continue to suffer if he assumes office and for decades.
 
The poor are suffering all over Africa to the tune of a half billion. They are eating out of trash bins in Lagos, a country with great oil resources.
 
Rather than pontificating, I and others are very sad about the chaotic situation. We know that merely tossing one tyrant out of office does not solve the problems of the suffering masses. The least of us know that solution is hollow. Though I'd like to join you in trashing Mugabe and other African heads of state, that verbal pleasure does not seem a productive solution to the complexities that occur in Zimbabwe or Nigeria, or other African states. Regrettable, nevertheless, any view not radically right  will be viewed as offering an excuse, as in Kristof's, If Only Mugabe Were White—Rudy

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Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh was born in Nigeria and currently lives in Germany. He had his Bachelors in Philosophy from the Pontificial Urban University Rome. Mr. Ogbunwezeh is currently working on a Ph.D. in Social Ethics and Economics at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His book The Tragedy of a Tribe: The Grand Conspiracy Against Ndigbo and the Igbo Quest for Integration in Nigeria was published in 2004. "Shots at Immortality: Immortalizing Igbo Excellence" and "The Scandal of Poverty in Africa: Reinventing a Role for Social Ethics in Confronting the Socio-economic and Political Challenges of Africa of the Third Millennium" will be published in 2005. Additionally, Mr. Ogbunwezeh published dozens of articles in newspapers, magazines, internet sites, and trade journals.

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Bill Moyers Interviews Douglass A. Blackmon, author of Slavery by Another Name:

 The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (2008)

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06202008/watch2.html

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posted 28 June 2008