Robert Mugabe- cooked-up threat to US foreign policy

By Bernard Bwoni

The case of the economic sanctions against Zimbabwe has seen the truly ugly face of ‘imperialism’ raise its head again and again with Mr Obama fronting the cause of the establishment. The narrative and the level of dishonesty has been breathtakingly unforgiveable and the dubious double standards are not coming from the Zimbabwe government side but Mr Obama himself. The architects and engineers of these illegal economic sanctions have continued with this carrot and stick game at the expense of the sanctions-induced destitution of the masses in Zimbabwe. The local opposition has been handheld into abyss and the outcome of their naivety has been the continued attempts at meddling into Zimbabwe's internal affairs through the illegal regime change agenda and the accelerated economic chaos that followed. The US President, Mr Barrack Obama recently came out stating that the US will continue to maintain the economic sanctions against Zimbabwe because “President Mugabe and his policies pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States”. What is so ‘unusual and extraordinary’ about an African leader reconstructing the biased colonial legacy where the indigenous population was deliberately dotted onto the margins of all economic activity in the country? The EU on the other has continued to show willingness to re-engage Zimbabwe and that has to be acknowledged and applauded.

 

The economic sanctions against Zimbabwe were never about the hollow and high-sounding themes of democracy, rule of law or civil liberties as the local opposition marionettes and those who hold the strings would try to make the world believe. They were never about 'championing for the rights of the downtrodden ordinary people of Zimbabwe'. They were never about the love for the people of Zimbabwe. The reality of the matter is that the sanctions were meant to separate the people of Zimbabwe from the meaningful and potent Mugabe policies of economic emancipation and the land reform which addressed and redressed a colonial wrong (there are no colonial rights by the way). History should have taught Morgan Tsvangirai and his bunch that American foreign policy only caters for American interests and not some uninspiring opposition leader in Zimbabwe. The sanctions are meant to further US foreign policy and anything or anyone who goes against this poses a threat to US foreign policy. President Mugabe and Zimbabwe fall in that category and hence the continued use of economic sanctions against the country as punishment.

 

What threat to US foreign policy is Mr Obama talking about? Surely Morgan Tsvangirai's High Seas voyages are more of a threat than what President Mugabe is trying to achieve in ensuring that the indigenous Zimbabwean is empowered to enable them to participate fully in the economy and benefit from this participation. That cannot be classified as a threat to US foreign surely? Could it be that Mr Obama is concerned about the increasing Russian and Chinese engagement with Zimbabwe and the emerging closer ties? There is no point in being vague, Mr Obama should just come out and state clearly what this threat is. Why should ordinary Zimbabweans continue to shoulder the burden of the economic sanctions for another year for an imaginary or cooked-up threat that does not exist?

 

Zimbabwe's current economic misfortunes are a direct result of these illegal and unwarranted economic sanctions against the country. Mr Obama is more concerned about US foreign policy, not the depravation and destitution that has been inflicted on the ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe. The economic sanctions were never and will never be about the people of Zimbabwe but the permanent interests of those who imposed these sanctions. It is the poor ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe who have to bear the full brunt of the sanctions so if these sanctions were indeed about the people of Zimbabwe then they should have been lifted unconditionally to alleviate the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe. It is disturbing and disheartening that Mr Obama is reducing the sanctions-induced suffering of the people to mere politics of imaginary threats to US foreign policy.  The engineers of these economic sanctions against Zimbabwe have always been less than sincere and their sole purpose has always been to advance their own interests whilst coercing defenceless victims like Zimbabwe into submission. This is tantamount to economic bullying through deliberate and direct sabotage of the economy and the Zimbabwe economy bears testimony to that. Zimbabwe has been reeling from the full force of this direct hit at the core of the country's economic engine which has seen the economy descend into an unstoppable tailspin. These economic sanctions against Zimbabwe have caused upheaval and disintegration socially, politically and economically. That is exactly the intended outcome of the US and EU foreign policy to make the people suffer into submission and turn against their leadership and institutions. The social malfunction, the economic disintegration and the political meltdown that followed is what Mr Obama is pointing out as the consequences for 'threatening US foreign policy'. The fact of the matter is that US foreign policy is in fact imperialism in disguise. Zimbabwe as a sovereign country should not be exposed to regime change agendas and that is more of a threat to Zimbabwe’s own internal policy than a threat to US foreign policy.

 

It is disingenuous for Mr Obama to make such claims that it is “necessary to continue this national emergency and maintain in force the sanctions to respond to this threat”. What threat? But then you have to forgive Mr Obama because he is only reading from the script. Zimbabwe does not and has never posed a threat to any other country's foreign policy. It is in fact the US which poses a real and direct threat to Zimbabwe's domestic policy through the continuance of these illegal and devastating economic sanctions. For Obama to act as the mouthpiece of these overtures of a former imperial establishment is disconcerting to say the least. The US and EU have come to the realisation that their Tsvangirai Project has failed dismally and as such cannot continue with their usual excuses for maintaining sanctions. They have now craftily coined it 'the threat to US foreign policy'. My foot! The only threat that exist is the continued and unabated economic decline due to these economic sanctions and further suffering of the ordinary people of Zimbabwe.

 

At the end of it all we all know that these economic sanctions against Zimbabwe are illegal and inhuman. Zimbabwe does not pose a threat to US foreign policy in any shape or form. The US is not at all concerned about all those high sounding nothings of democracy, rule of law or good governance which the local opposition was trained to recite as their gateway to the Presidium. There are many real rogue regimes that have repeatedly violated their own people’s civil liberties and have no idea what democracy is yet the US and her allies continue to enjoy very good relations. This has always been and will always be about permanent interests and nothing else. The US main concern is to punish Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe for going against the grain and pursuing policies that seek to empower the indigenous people. Zimbabwe's thrust towards economic emancipation goes directly against the imperialistic agendas of exploiting developing countries of their natural resources. The erstwhile imperial powers continue to get richer and richer whilst the victim countries continue to wallow in perennial poverty and destitution. The threat which Mr Obama is talking about is the fact that these policies are resonating well continent wide with other African countries and that pose a threat to the unrestrained exploitation of resources these former imperial have enjoyed. That is the threat President Mugabe poses to US foreign policy.

 

bernardbwoni.blogspot.com

What the heck has the London Mayor been smoking lately?

By Bernard Bwoni

The Telegraph published London Mayor Boris Johnson’s article entitled ‘Happy Birthday Mr Mugabe with special love from Labour’ on the 22^nd February 2015 and this got me thinking, what the heck has this man been smoking seriously? The Conservative Party and the ruling party in Zimbabwe have enjoyed cordial relations from way back then before the country’s independence and the Lancaster House Conference and as such this confused and confusing article would have made a lot sense coming from Tony Blair himself. I bet Mrs. Margaret Thatcher would be turning in her grave at this unwarranted and nauseating tirade against President Mugabe. Mayor Boris Johnson started off by calling President Mugabe’s 21^st February Movement ‘an event of truly spectacular ugliness’ and he wonders ‘who on earth would want to there?’ The simple answer to Johnson’s lazy question is, the many Zimbabweans who voted the man into power would definitely want to be there. I am convinced Mayor Boris Johnson wrote this article whilst under the influence of something that is not legally available on the open market. For starters how on earth did he come to the conclusion that Zimbabweans eat lion meat? He calls those who were going to be attending President Mugabe’s birthday celebrations a ‘meat-maddened mob’ and ‘brain-washed Zimbabweans’ who will sing happy birthday ‘to the man who has impoverished their country’.  From there onwards his article became a mish-mash of contradictions and confusion.

The fact of the matter is that in the last general election in Zimbabwe 61% of the electorate voted President Mugabe into power in an election endorsed as free, fair and credible by the SADC and African Union observers. These were the observers who were on the ground and that is the democracy which Mayor Boris claims to champion. So for him to call those who decided to celebrate President Mugabe’s birthday as ‘brainwashed’ is not only condescending but an attempt at muzzling people’s democratic right and downright dirty. President Mugabe is a hero for many Zimbabweans Mayor Boris and the fact that he is not your hero does not make those Zimbabweans who see him as a hero ‘brainwashed’.

Reading through Mayor Boris’ article one is left wondering where on earth he got his facts from to come up with this fiction of an article. He makes spurious claims that all teachers across Zimbabwe had been forced to contribute $10 each for these celebrations. I initially gave Mayor Boris the benefit of the doubt but decided to check with a few of my friends in Zimbabwe who are teachers just to make sure and none of them was aware of such a call. So where did Johnson get these distortions from? Or did he just make it all up in this moment of madness?

Mayor Boris then goes on to make a revealing admission that it was the Labour Government under Tony Blair who played a ‘shameful part in the disaster’ and that is absolutely right. It is this ‘shameful part’ that meant that the British Government reneged on funding the Land Reform process in Zimbabwe as agreed at the Lancaster House Conference, Tony Blair and his bosom buddy George Bush’s economic sanctions against Zimbabwe have indeed caused the untold suffering of the ordinary people in Zimbabwe. Mayor Boris rightly points out that the British Government agreed to fund the land reform at Lancaster and he rightly places the blame on Tony Blair and Claire Short for going back on the arrangement. Now the question to pose to Mayor Boris is why the uncalled for attack on President Mugabe?

It is the British government betrayal of the Lancaster House agreement that led to the Fast Track Land Reform in Zimbabwe and it is because of the Fast Track Land Reform that the EU and the USA imposed economic sanctions against Zimbabwe. It is the economic sanctions that have led to the ‘malnourishment of children’ and ‘the companies going to the wall’ that Mayor Boris was going on about. He then goes on to the pluck figures out of thin air in his drunken state I assume and makes yet more unsubstantiated claims that Zimbabwe is now the ‘poorest nation on earth’ and talks about the ‘ravages of HIV’, the ‘emaciated figures listlessly on street corners’ as his evidence of Zimbabwe being the poorest country on earth ‘beaten only by Congo’. I am left wondering what indicators Boris used to come up with such ridiculous claims?

Let us get things right about Zimbabwe and Congo which Mayor Boris again decided to conveniently omit. These two countries are extraordinarily rich in natural resources and they are not playing ball with Western capital and hence Mayor Boris’ frustration. He goes on to patronize Zimbabwe and the liberation war by stating ‘readers will remember the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement, by which Margaret Thatcher granted independence to Rhodesia’. This man is mad! The Zimbabwe independence did not come on a silver platter Mayor Boris, but it was the protracted liberation struggle that brought the Rhodesians to the negotiating table at Lancaster. The liberation of Zimbabwe was not handed over to the people of Zimbabwe, arms were taken up against the unrelenting Rhodesian government, and blood was shed until that priceless day on 18^th April 1980 when Zimbabwe attained its independence.

Mayor Boris puts that blame on Tony Blair for reneging on the arrangements agreed at Lancaster as the reason for the cause of the Fast Track Land Reform in Zimbabwe but then contradicts himself by claiming that ‘Mugabe’s long reign has been characterised by one overwhelming objective: to exterminate the last vestiges of white power’. This is totally unfounded because President Mugabe is the first African leader to coin the concept of National Reconciliation long before Mandela was credited as the icon of reconciliation. After independence the whites in Zimbabwe were left untouched and they continued to live freely. Ian Smith lived freely in Zimbabwe until his death and he is buried in Zimbabwe. President Mugabe embraced his erstwhile nemesis of the liberation struggle and even had whites in his cabinet. Mayor Boris then goes on to contradict himself again by stating that it was this betrayal of the Lancaster House Agreement that gave ‘Mugabe his pretext to launch his pogroms against the whites’.  No Mayor Boris, this was not an attack on whites but rather a case of addressing some historical inequalities and these had been tabled at Lancaster. The 6000 whites Mayor Boris mentioned owned over 70% of the arable land in Zimbabwe whilst the over 10 million indigenous black people of Zimbabwe were relegated to the most unproductive lands of the country and the margins of all economic activity.

 

The London Mayor goes on to say that the Labour government allowed Mugabe to ‘launch a racist tyranny’ and that it was Labour’s betrayal of Lancaster that gave Mugabe the ‘pretext for the despotic confiscations’. Let it be made clear that the liberation war in Zimbabwe was about the land and hence the agreement that the British Government would fund the process of redistributing the land to its original owners. The land reform in Zimbabwe, whichever form it took, was inevitable and necessary to redress the ruthless land tenure laws drafted by the crafty Rhodesian colonial system. The Fast Track Land Reform in Zimbabwe was a case of correcting a skewed land ownership pattern where a few whites owned the majority of the fertile land at the expense of the many black Zimbabweans who had been forced into the rock terrains of the country. President Mugabe did not make up the provisions of the Lancaster House but these were agreed by all principals.

Mayor Boris is right about one thing throughout his article that Tony Blair and his colleagues were responsible for the breakdown of the cordial relations between Zimbabwe and the British Government. He nailed it when he places the blame on the Labour Government but then lost it when he went into this tirade against President Mugabe. It was the inexperience and hastiness of Tony Blair that the provisions of the Lancaster House Agreement were scrapped and President Mugabe had no choice but to redistribute land to the hungry and angry landless indigenous Zimbabweans.

Zimbabweans have celebrated President Mugabe’s 21^st February Movement for years now and will continue to do so. Those who decide to go, it is their right and not for Boris to decide or ridicule. Those who go are not ‘a meat-maddened mob’ or ‘brainwashed’ but willing Zimbabweans. There are children, educated adults and elders who attend and no one puts a gun to their heads to attend this over-subscribed yearly event. Zimbabweans do not eat lion meat Mayor Boris so get your facts right before going to print. Mr David Cameron just like all the other Conservative leaders have always accorded President Mugabe a modicum of respect and that is the bedrock of the Zimbabwe-British relations. Mayor Boris got it terribly wrong when he launched this attack on President Mugabe. Whatever he is smoking these days has to be banned.

 

bernardbwoni.blogspot.com