‘The truth about Zimbabwe’

Scene from “More Fire”

The International Action Center hosted an important meeting in New York on Aug. 16 about the current situation in the African country of Zimbabwe—known as Rhodesia during British colonial rule. The guest speaker was Omowale Clay, a leader of the Brooklyn-based December 12th Movement.

Omowale Clay and Kwaaze Jamerias, Aug. 16.

Clay was part of a six-member delegation that traveled throughout Zimbabwe this spring, before and during parliamentary elections there. Clay showed an illuminating documentary he had produced called “More Fire,” which showed the mass mobilization of Zimbabwean war veterans, women and youth, especially in the rural areas, who support President Robert Mugabe and his political party, ZANU-PF.

Mugabe has been the victim of a vicious smear campaign by Presi dent George W. Bush and Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair because of the African leader’s support for the right of the Zimbabwean people to take back the land stolen from them by white colonial settlers, beginning in the late 1800s.

—Story and photos by Monica Moorehead