Zimbabwean Spirit Against The Gathering Storm (en français)
Lire en francais : http://africamaat.com/Mugabe-ou-L-Esprit-Zimbabween
Professor Cheik Anta Diop, before he died told African people to 'arm themselves with knowledge,' yet most of our people consistently choose ignorance and so are totally unaware of the realities in Africa and especially in Zimbabwe. They are content to simply mimic what they have been told by the Western media and are too lazy to do the necessary research to get a comprehensive picture of what is truly going on in that country. African people have allowed Western divide and rule tactics to distract them from their ultimate goal so we need to thank Professor Asante for helping us to refocus on what is really essential. Hort
Zimbabwean Spirit Against The Gathering Storm
Molefi Kete Asante
President, Association of Nubian Kemetic Heritage
Author, The History of Africa
www.asante.net
The unfolding anti-Zimbabwean initiative of Britain and the United States government is a part of the racist ideology of the West against a free, independent Zimbabwe. As an African American who worked and lived in Zimbabwe immediately after the Second Chimurenga I am appalled at the lack of understanding on the part of those Zimbabweans who support the activities of the Movement for Demoncratic Change, a party underwritten financially from the United States and Britain.
Indeed, Samora Machel used to say that “The struggle for liberation is a university.” The only problem is that many people never went to war for their lilberation. Harriet Tubman said that she could have saved a thousand instead of the 300 she led to freedom if she could have convinced them that they were enslaved people.
In fact, what we see in Zimbabwe is the attempt on the part of American conservative groups joined with British groups to introduce a Trojan Horse in the middle of the Zimbabwean nation. This is to be expected. This is the pattern of destabilization and it is a shame that many of our own leaders in the United States have not understood the intention of the sanctions against Zimbabwe.
Morgan Tsvangarai is a creation of the white landed class in Zimbabwe. Through their money, as seen with Tsvangarai’s support from the white farmer Roy Bennett, who is the treasurer of the MDC, and other whites the MDC has been able to buy votes, influence the peasant populations in the rural areas, and create chaos.
I trained journalists in Zimbabwe at ZIMCO in the early l980s and was responsible for its first diploma class. I have been angered by the continuing propaganda of the Western media against the liberties and freedoms of Zimbabweans.
While we all condemn the actions of the goons who attack innocent people, we reserve our greatest condemnation for the political goons who are like Uncle Toms begging their former masters for bread. They will sell their mothers and fathers’ inheritance for money from the West.
MDC is an instrument of the Western imperialists in the most concrete terms. It receives its money, resources, and support from the most reactionary elements in the Western countries and has shown itself to be against the general interests of the masses of people.
Freedom loving people realize the attempt to paint Zimbabwe as a rogue government, disconnected from the people, by the Western media. There is no reason for the people of Zimbabwe to be despondent because there are many friends of freedom and independence who see the hoopla in the British and American media as a part of
On CNN in the United States, Jesse Jackson said on June 24th that Robert Mugabe was a hero but not anymore. This is a heresy. What has Mugabe done to be demoted as a hero? He gave his youth and adult life fighting in the bush against the white occupiers of his foreparents land. Mugabe will always be a hero to freedom loving African Americans. No, Mugabe’s land reform action to return stolen land to the legitimate owners has caused an orchestrated campaign against Mugabe and his government. But the catalogue does not stop there. He captured and put in prison a group of military adventurers who were planning to overthrown an African nation. Many of them had ties to the white community in Britain.
I see Jesse Jackson’s position as part of the international effort to pressure the Zimbabwean people to submit to intervention and international pressure. Even Nelson Mandela was in Britain condemning Mugabe for the tragedy of leadership. This is the power of the Western political system.
When Mandela was in jail, Mugabe allowed the use of his own country and his own resources to aid the ANC fighters in trying to overthrow the minority regime in South Africa. Has Mandela forgot this or did someone fail to tell him?
I think that the progressive elements in the African American community must reassure the Zimbabwean people that they have many friends in the West and around the world who truly understand the reason for the suffering in Zimbabwe and know that the MDC is being used to reassert racist and compradorist elements in the country.
Zimbabweans are the only people who can solve their problems; however, the Zimbabwean people must know that their enemies have been working around the clock to undermine the legitimate functioning of the government.
Since the land reform movement the reactionary white and black elements in the United States, Australian, South Africa, and Britain have been seeking an internal Zimbabwean lever to pry loose the strong, committed, and determined will of the Zimbabwean people.
If the MDC pulls out of the election then the election must continue because Tsvangarai’s name is already on the ballots. The African Union has observers in the country already but Mugabe has wisely kept out of the nation those individuals who would enter the country to spy, undermine, or to create chaos by trying to find enemies of the government.
The MDC is pulling out of the election because it knows it cannot win. They will try to convince the world that the decisions of the people are forced, but Zimbabweans must stand with their heroic history and refuse to allow outside forces to rob the country of its independence. Long live the heroes of the Chimurenga! Long live the comrades who gave their lives in the mountains and valleys of beautiful Zimbabwe.
The European and American dance toward intervention inside Zimbabwe is a part of the same hypocrisy that Africa has experienced for many years. If Morgan Tsvangarai believes that his attachment to the West and its interests in supporting the minority white landholders in Zimbabwe will bring him to power he is absolutely wrong.
The masses of Zimbabweans understand that when 4000 whites held 75 percent of the arable land in Zimbabwe there was no outrage on the part of the Europeans and Americans. These masses may have to tighten their belts, rein in their materials needs in order to maintain their freedom as Britain and American play out their sanctions.
Should Zimbabwe acquiesce to the interests of the white minority against the masses of its own people it will surely be the worst form of slavery that has appeared in southern Africa. The fact that Mugabe at the head of ZANU was a military leader means that he knows what the situation was in his country before the rise of the MDC-T and its supporters from the American and British right wing.
So long as the people elect the ZANU-PF government it should remain in power as the vanguard of the revolution. When the people, without coercion from the outside, choose another party then ZANU-PF should leave office.
There is no wonder that a survey of young Africans a couple of years ago gave Robert Mugabe higher marks for leadership against the West than any other continental leader in Africa. Long Live Robert Mugabe!
Further reading:
Zimbabwe at War http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/zimbabwe-at-war/
Worried Over Robert Mugabe Vs. the Western World's Press?
By Lloyd Whitefield Butler, Jr
The Zimbabwe Guardian (London)
22 June 2008
SHOULD you be worrying about 84 year old Robert Gabriel Mugabe, duly elected President of the Republic of Zimbabwe returning Zimbabwe land to Zimbabweans in national security mode? Should the world be worrying about a US, EU, Britain backed Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) run-off election to un-declare its government's Declaration of Independence and to abolish its Constitution and return illegally seized land to white farmers? Should the World Press worry about Tendai Biti, Secretary General of the Movement for Democratic Change, who said the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) must "play the midwifery role" in easing President Robert Mugabe from power in the aftermath of the March 29 election?
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Don't worry that Secretary Tandai Biti said to Zimbabwe government authorities: 'If diplomacy fails, "the next thing is a war," Mr. Biti also told reporters after a news conference. "It's not an option to us, but one say some [person] is going to say, 'This is the only solution.' SADC must act now before rivers of dead people start to flow, as they did in Rwanda." Don't worry that officially '...MDC insists Tsvangirai won outright the first time.' 'We decided to participate in the run-off to give the people of Zimbabwe a second chance to kick out the dictatorship. We have now declared a zero vote for Robert Mugabe," Khupe told supporters. Don't worry about MDC-T Deputy President Thokozani Khupe's statement that 'We need to give Mugabe a final blow. On June 27 we will be having a ZANU-PF funeral. We are going to make sure we bury them so that they will not resurrect again.' Don't worry about whether world affairs are spinning out of control? No, worry about Sir Robert Gabriel Mugabe returning colonial apartheid seized land back to landless Zimbabweans who were murdered and forced off their land by a British apartheid colonial invasion. Don't worry that "the United States put the IMF and the World Bank in charge of the Third World debt problem and essentially instructed them to do two things: keep the debtor countries paying something so that official defaults could be avoided and squeeze as much money out of them as possible. The two semimoribund institutions accepted their new role with alacrity, delighted to act as collection agencies for banks that had made bad loans. Thus were born the World Bank's "structural adjustments loans" and the IMF's "structural adjustment programs."
In America don't worry that "Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism." Don't worry that "Half of world's child deaths occur in Africa - "The State of Africa's Children 2008," was launched on May 28 at the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development. The facts are shocking. Although Africa accounts for only 22 percent of births globally, half of the 10 million child deaths annually occur on the continent." That "Bankers savaged by credit crunch - The great credit crisis, which has cost the world's largest banks billions since last summer, hit a new low on April Fools' Day when UBS made another £9bn of writedowns. The losses, mainly incurred through the US sub-prime mortgage market, cost chairman Marcel Ospel his job. UBS is the biggest victim so far, having lost more than £18bn." That "The crisis took a dramatic twist on March 16 when Wall Street investment bank Bear Stearns was sold to JP Morgan Chase for an initial knockdown price of $2 a share, or a total of $236m. The news triggered turmoil on global stock markets and a sharp decline in the US dollar while gold and oil prices soared. Shareholder protests later forced JP Morgan to increase its offer to $10 a share."
Just worry about President Mugabe returning Zimbabwe land back to Zimbabweans. Don't worry "That corporations have taken the spotlight as latter-day English-speaking conquistadores--Magellans of technology, Cortéses of consumer goods, and Pizarros of entertainment--reflected in the cosmopolitanizing of their profits, a cousinship to earlier Dutch and then British cosmopolitanizing of investment." Don't worry about the "Plan to Fingerprint Foreigners Exiting U.S. Is Opposed - The airline industry and embassies of 34 countries, including the members of the European Union, are urging the U.S. government to withdraw a plan that would require airlines and cruise lines to collect digital fingerprints of all foreigners before they depart the United States, starting in August 2009."
In America "This year, 24 foreign carriers and about eight U.S. carriers have halted operations, gone out of business or sought bankruptcy protection. The carriers stand to lose $6.1 billion this year if the price of oil remains at $135 a barrel, Bisignani said in a letter Thursday to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff." Just worry about Zimbabwe! How dare an African give colonial land back to Africans. Rubbish! Don't worry about "Security fears over food and fuel crisis - Western countries have upgraded the food and fuel crisis into a national security concern as they fear record high energy and agriculture commodity costs are destabilizing key developing regions of the world." Don't worry about America "Borrowing $2 billion to $3 billion a day from other countries to maintain the world's highest standard of living, based on conspicuous consumption, in an age of growing world shortages, while fighting two wars whose costs will soon ring up a $1 trillion tab, is tantamount to living on borrowed time."
That "Activists turn to Blackwater over Darfur - Mia Farrow, the actress and activist, has asked Blackwater, the US private security company active in Iraq, for help in Darfur after becoming frustrated by the stalled deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping force. Ms. Farrow said she had approached Erik Prince, founder and owner of Blackwater, to discuss whether a military role was either feasible or desirable." That "Rich countries have so far given only one-seventh of the extra aid they promised to Africa three years ago, with France particularly off-track, according to a report." Don't worry about "World Bank backs contentious director - Colin Bruce, the World Bank country director at the centre of a storm of controversy during Kenya's post-election crisis, has been named as director of operations and strategy for Africa. - Officials said the appointment was not technically a promotion but it allowed Mr. Bruce to influence funding decisions for the continent as a whole." Worry about Zimbabwe!
Don't worry about "3 in 10 Americans admit to racial bias" That a "Corruption probe halts Iraqi rebuilding - U.S.-funded reconstruction of city suspended as mayor, police chief are investigated in oil scam." Don't worry about "U.S. lawmakers want Mandela off terrorism list - Bill has support from Justice Dept.; awaits approval from Senate " as of Sunday, June 22, 2008 That "More than 100 barges idled on Mississippi - One operator estimates his losses at $25,000 a day, and that could grow" That "According to a report released Tuesday, the CIA's actions in blocking the investigators' access to Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah were "unwarranted" and "hampered" an investigation by the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General into the FBI's knowledge of abuse by CIA and U.S. military interrogators." Worry about Mugabe returning Zimbabwe land to Zimbabweans.
Don't worry about "Mohammed ElBaradei, the United Nations' top nuclear weapons official, says a military strike on Iran would turn the Mideast into a "ball of fire." That the "The Federal Highway Administration said Thursday it estimates that Americans drove 1.4 billion fewer miles on public roads in April. That's a decline of 1.8% compared to April 2007 and is the sixth consecutive month that drivers have cut back." Don't worry about: "Afghan security forces knew Taliban militants were planning an offensive near the southern city of Kandahar last week but were distracted by a mass prison break" "American beef imports to South Korea will not resume anytime soon after a new import deal with the United States failed to quell South Koreans' concerns about mad cow disease and their policy grievances" "NATO general calls for 6000 more troops in Afghanistan"
"Nigerian president declares war on militants in the Niger Delta - The presidency said militant activities were undermining efforts aimed at addressing the huge developmental challenges in the oil rich Niger Delta region." "[US] Presidential Lies and Deceptions - When spin crosses the line, the credibility gap is hard to repair" "OIL SUMMIT: Nigeria Oil Output At Lowest In 25 Yrs -Official" "Former Cuban president Fidel Castro has lambasted the European Union's decision to lift diplomatic sanctions against Cuba but imposed tough human rights conditions, calling the move an "enormous hypocrisy." Worry about Sir Robert Mugabe returning land to landless Zimbabweans.
Don't worry about "Guns blight US energy choices - The United States, noted for losing low-skilled jobs to developing countries, has ceded the ground to Europe and Japan in higher-level manufacturing, notably in the sustainable-energy sector. That flows from the Pentagon draining engineering, scientific and business talent that could otherwise develop technologies that would help the country avoid economic and environmental collapse." Don't worry that the "US in military misstep over African oil - The impact in Africa will likely be the same as in Iraq: perpetual occupation, instability, and growing anti-Americanism." Don't worry that "In recognition of "the emerging strategic importance of Africa", President George W Bush in February 2007 ordered the creation of AFRICOM, the US Africa Command. AFRICOM centralizes all authority for the US military operating in the African region under one command structure. While fighting terrorism in Africa is the primary reason given for the establishment of AFRICOM, oil appears to be the more pressing motivator. - "the key aspect of which is the US military's transformation into a global oil protection force".Don't worry about "The Bush administration has increasingly turned to the Department of Defense to ensure more stable governments in Africa that are supportive of both the US government and US (and US-affiliated) oil corporations and to guarantee an amenable (some would argue, subdued) populace."
Worried about Zimbabwe returning its million year old land sovereignty back to its landless citizens means everything to the World Press Media while the rest of the world means nothing. Coming to the Final Rounds of Sir Robert Mugabe versus the Western Press it appears the Forces of Nature has interrupted and is presently warning everybody on Earth that crimes against humanity is criminal but crimes against nature is catastrophic. Today's escalation in natural calamities are Nature's way, in high definition, of cleansing and decontaminating itself from the abuse and toxic effects of Western Civilization. It is time to get Back to African Nature Time back to Zulu Time. Greenwich Time appears to have run its course.
Wake up African Press!
Zimbabwe: How soon we forget
Stella Orakwue
June 10, 2008
The Herald
IT is a pity that the people who voted against President Robert Mugabe have no ability to remember the servitude they existed in prior to the last 28 years. They did it for the money. What is the price of the loyalty? It is a heavy price to pay when "your" people are prepared to buy and sell you for Western money. Western money could not, and cannot, buy President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. But clearly, as the number of people who voted against him in the presidential election show, people of Zimbabwe, in Zimbabwe, are prepared to sell him to the West in return for money.
Land, property, money, buying and selling. The ownership of land, the ownership of property. Property and the European. Robert Mugabe knew, and knows, about what property means. Other people's land. Land belonging to people with black skin. He knows what that means. Property and the European are interchangeable, indistinguishable, inseparable. The one goes with the other. One without the other is untenable. The two together provide an almost visible exhibition of an orgasmic sensation-taking place. But together the European and other people's land, particularly land belonging to black people, and we have climax, multiple orgasmic sensation.
Are the people of Zimbabwe prepared to return to servicing the orgasmic needs of the European desire for property, money, ownership and control of the people's land? Whether that control and ownership is direct or indirect? Are Zimbabweans prepared, willing, and ready to be servicing foreign nations, foreign international bodies, foreign leaders, and foreign "global community"?
And what is the price of service to your own nation and your own continent, Africa? Robert Mugabe, fighter, liberator, leader, man, has paid heavy price upon heavy price. But he will stand fast because men like "Mugabe" come back once a century. Men who bring true transformational change to the lives of their people. It is a pity that "the people" in whose lives this fundamental change has been wrought have such short memories. It is a pity but it is irrelevant that they have no ability to remember the servitude they existed in prior to the last 28 years.
It is irrelevant because of all Africans, living and not yet born, for millennia to come, the actions of Robert Mugabe in returning land, African land, to the rightful ownership of African people, will live on inside all Africans. He will be the psyche of all Africans for all time. And there is nothing that anybody, particularly any foreign body or power can do about that. For they are not God, and it is God who gave us "Mugabe" to lead his people and to show African people the way. Viva Mugabe, viva!
But watch the European cocks crowing! They think their hour is nigh. These Zimbabwean elections aren't "fixed" or "rigged" when they think that their man, the "democratic opposer", has won. Only election wins they don't like are unstomachable. They did it for the money, for the "help" they think will come. The white "helpers" with their dome-shaped bags laden with helping money. Money that is not available to men that they do not like. Friendly white money that will take the burden of the land off their black backs and hand it back to the white man. For is it not the land the white man's rightful burden? So you Zimbabwean friends white help, lie back, relax, let the white help show you how to do it. That's what friendly white money is for – loosening your control of things. Sit, take the load of the land off your back. Other people want to run your country.
Those people of Zimbabwe who want the democratic opposer, let us see how long it will last. Zimbabweans who want to put their lives in other people's monied hands – let us see how long you remain pleased with the results that await you. Perhaps you do prefer to reap where you do not sow. After all, the Europeans bringing friendly White Money say that those nice, poor blacks that they want to help, well, they don't know how to sow and grow anything on land because they are black and blacks have never been farmers, and they are helpless and they need help. White help.
You can shout at me, "What do I know about poverty and going without food and having no money?" and I will laugh in your face. Do you think that I don't know about poverty, about being poor, because I "live in the West"? I know about poverty. Poverty has been my closest friend for many years. There have been times when I have asked myself whether it is worse to have no food in a place where there is no food – and therefore you all go hungry – or to have no food in a place where food is aplenty but you have no money to buy food – and therefore you go hungry. You see, you can go hungry in the West, too. I know what it is like to count every single penny in my buttered old purse – not to save up for a car or a television, but to buy a loaf of bread, because that is all I have to eat.
It teaches me yet another thing about myself that I didn't know that I was capable of: Money could never, ever buy me. I have seen, and I see, that I would rather starve than bow down to anything that I did not believe in. I would rather starve than sell my fundamental principles. Yes, you cannot eat principles, but without them you don't deserve to eat. Without them you are better off dead.
Look at the Westerners circling like sharks! They flocked from their watching hotels around the globe. They came to bury Robert Mugabe, but he won't go without a fight. What an alarm this poses – what, a black man fighting instead of fleeing or cowering before the white man and his henchmen and women! Let them dig a hole in the ground, fill it with money, and bury themselves in it.
Do you think that if "Mugabe" had got the money, the financial credits, the financial buttresses that Zimbabwe needed, that Zimbabwe's economic situation would not be utterly different, and that "the people" would not have given him the vast majority he deserved? "The people" of the "democratic opposer" know that it is the presence of "Mugabe" that is preventing the West from giving them friendly White money. Money meant for them that that they are not getting because he is there. Sad. Very sad. Sad to see what people will do for money and how flexible their principles can be!
Is it too hard without the white man? Without the Westerner in charge of your resources, in charge of your money, looking after you behind the scenes? Would "the people" rather have the Westerner in charge of their land? Do "the people" actually want "their own" land, if the white man and his Friendly Money are not going to be looking after them?
How much money was taken out of the country by Friendly White Employers with their vast land holdings? How beneficial was that for Zimbabweans? The Friendly White Employers slept in lavish houses and mansions with all unnecessary necessities, all the finest purchasable amenities that money from land could buy; while their "loved" farm workers enjoyed a mattress on an earth floor in their basic dwellings fit for basic lives, and all the rudimentary things that just a teeny-weeny bit of money could buy.
How much money will pour in, Zimbabweans, if you sell out the man who gave you back your land? Will you luxuriate in money like you would in a vast deep bath, water swirling all around you? How long will the taps stay on? The white man's Friendly Money is running on empty. But don't tell "the people" – let them find out the easy way.
What is the rate of return on betrayal? What is the rate of return on a lack of fortitude, a lack of desire for self-being? What is the rate of return on flexible principles? Do you think that the West will ever forgive that land that his kith and kin once held was returned to its rightful owners, back into the hands of black people? It is untenable for them. It is not something that they can deal with, because it has never happened to them before. Their urge is to get it back, buy it back, lease it back, rent it back – do anything but have it back in their hands one way or the other. They need to be back in charge. In control, holding the land and its money again, and the "democratic opposer" and his supporters will help them. Do you think that there is some kind of mysterious white magic to running an economy? That only white people with their white money can do it? How shameful that after only one generation "the people" of Zimbabwe are already going down this road. What was it for, President Mugabe, I ask you?
I say this to myself: God provides, then it is up to each of us to decide what to do with his provisions. God provides, we decide. The Lord has given us that ability. And we do not bow down to people who behave, who conduct themselves, as if they are gods walking upon this earth: Do as they say or else die. Away with them! Your life is in your own hands.
Friendly White Money is nothing but a short-term pay off, a lease on comfort. It is here today, gone tomorrow. But in a worse economic state. And then you will be back to where you were before but without your dignity, without your strength, without your pride. Back to dependence instead of independence. Back to tilling the soil for others instead of for yourselves. Back to waiting for what the white man wants to do with you, instead of what you want to do for yourselves. Back to no land.
The time you should have spent "suffering" – how does it compare to the war year? But learning about yourselves, your skills, your capacities, you spent in what passed for a "comfortable" life of dependency on the white man and his Friendly post-Mugabe Money. –
New African Magazine.