Zimbabwe confronts greatest destabilization effort
By
Abayomi Azikiwe
Published Apr 30, 2008 9:12 PM
Following are excerpts from an article that can be read in its entirety at panafricannews.blogspot.com.
Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire.
Once again the imperialist nations and their allied press agencies along with
other surrogate organizations have set out to destabilize the government of
President Robert Mugabe and the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union,
Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) Party. Utilizing the circumstances surrounding the
delay in the announcement of the results in the March 29 poll for the
parliament and presidential elections, the chorus of calls for regime change
has dominated the airwaves and print media.
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Contemporary sculpture
from Zimbabwe
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U.S. envoy Jendayi Frazer, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs,
was dispatched in late April to African countries to trumpet the idea of regime
change in Zimbabwe. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has openly announced in the
British Parliament that Mugabe must resign and hand over power to the
pro-Western opposition party—Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
The British have promised the MDC leadership the sum of one billion pounds
annually in order to purportedly rebuild the economy of Zimbabwe, wrecked by
the machinations of the former colonial power in London in cooperation with the
United States and the European Union (EU). What moral right do these
imperialist nations have to interfere in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe and
consequently Africa as a whole?
With specific reference to the U.S., the whole idea of criticizing the Zimbabwe
Electoral Commission (ZEC) represents the height of hypocrisy. Was it not the
current Bush regime that came into office in 2000 as a result of the
disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of voters, many of whom were
African Americans, during the debacle in Florida that led to the ascendancy of
the present administration?
Even in 2004 the Congressional Black Caucus and other civil rights
organizations challenged the decisive vote count in Ohio that gave the
necessary margin to declare George W. Bush the victor for a disastrous second
term in Washington. Nonetheless, when democratic elections do not suit the
interests of imperialism, such as what happened in Palestine when Hamas won the
majority of seats in the Authority, the results were rejected not only by the
state of Israel but also the U.S.
When Zimbabwe gained its independence in 1980, it was considered a major
accomplishment that would eventually lead to the triumph of the national
liberation struggles in southern Africa.
Under the Lancaster House accords of 1979-1980, the British settlers would
maintain control of most of the land in Zimbabwe for a period of ten years. The
whites would be guaranteed a 20 percent bloc within the House of Parliament for
a decade and the independent government would not nationalize the mines and
other business interests inside the country.
However, it was agreed that the UK and the U.S. would supply funding for a land
reform program within ten years to subsidize the gradual removal of the British
from the prime land in Zimbabwe and the re-emergence of self-sufficient African
farmers and agricultural workers.
By the end of the 1990s, the ZANU-PF government of President Robert Mugabe,
after patiently waiting for two decades for the unfulfilled promises of the
former colonial power of Britain and their imperialist partners in the U.S.,
the passage of constitutional amendments granted the right to seize the farms
of approximately 50 percent of the white settlers for the resettlement of the
African people.
With the assistance of the revolutionary war veterans from the national
liberation struggle of the 1960s and 1970s, these farms were occupied and the
settlers, who held both Zimbabwean and British citizenship, were forced to
leave and concede ownership to the government, which developed plans for land
redistribution.
Destabilization
and the neoliberal agenda
Since 1998, when it became clear that the ZANU-PF government would eventually
embark upon a radical land reform program, the Western imperialist countries
set out to bring down the administration of President Robert Mugabe. In a
referendum to give an electoral mandate to the constitutional reforms designed
to escalate the land redistribution program, the formation of an alliance of
internal opposition forces backed by the settler-colonialists and their
external allies in the UK and the U.S. were able to defeat the initiative.
Further evidence of the inroads made by the pro-Western political interests in
Zimbabwe was the growth of the recently formed Movement for Democratic Change.
In the parliamentary elections held during June of 2000, the ruling ZANU-PF
party won a majority by a small margin after months of a concerted and
well-financed propaganda campaign targeting the land reform program.
This was accompanied by the persistent efforts of the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and other Western financial institutions to weaken the economy of
Zimbabwe. The country, which is geographically landlocked, depends heavily on
the transport of goods through the neighboring Republic of South Africa and
Mozambique. By 2002, when presidential elections were held, the ruling ZANU-PF
party had consolidated the land reform program and was able to defeat the
opposition MDC at the polls.
Yet the efforts of the imperialists and their collaborators inside the country
among the white settlers, the opposition MDC leadership as well as the local
capitalist class, continued their efforts to destabilize the Zimbabwe
government led by ZANU-PF. When attempts to stage violent regime-change
demonstrations failed, the economy came under siege.
The refusal of financial institutions to grant credit to the government, the
hoarding of consumer goods to drive up prices coupled with sanctions and the
eventual suspension of the country from the British Commonwealth had a dramatic
impact on the ability of the ZANU-PF government to provide basic services to
the people.
Eventually Zimbabwe would withdraw completely from the old colonially imposed
Commonwealth and develop a “Look East” policy which would emphasize
greater cooperation and trade within Africa itself and between the country and
Asian nations, particularly China. This policy helped provide breathing space
for the ZANU-PF government, since China also offered diplomatic support to the
Mugabe administration by preventing efforts to bring the country before the
United Nations Security Council to discuss supposed human rights
violations.
The role of the People’s Republic of China in Africa has been a cause for
tremendous consternation in Western ruling circles. China has extended its
economic cooperation within many countries on the African continent. In Sudan,
they have provided an outlet for the distribution of petroleum resources from
their growing oil industry, which the U.S. has been prevented from
participating in for over a decade.
This past April, the U.S. and Britain attempted to impose an illegal arms
embargo against Zimbabwe after it was discovered that a substantial shipment of
weapons and military equipment was being sent to the country. First a
white-dominated dockworkers union in South Africa went to court to prevent the
arms shipment sent by China from being unloaded and transported to landlocked
Zimbabwe. It was recently announced that the Republic of Angola would allow the
arms to be unloaded through their ports.
U.S. envoy Jendayi Frazer was dispatched to the continent to pressure various
governments to both support Western efforts to set an embargo outside the U.N.
Security Council and to also advance the notion of a so-called
“government of national unity” where the pro-Western MDC opposition
party would be in the forefront.
The problems associated with the delay in elections results in Zimbabwe were
utilized as an excuse to make a major push toward regime change in this
southern African nation. According to the MDC, the ruling party lost the March
29 elections. Yet the actual figures from the first tabulation and the recount
only place the MDC slightly ahead of ZANU-PF in the lower house of Parliament;
neither the opposition or the ruling party achieved an outright majority.
ZANU-PF has speculated that the results of the presidential elections would not
give a majority to either the ruling party or the opposition MDC. The ZANU-PF
politburo in a recent meeting stated that they were prepared for a runoff
election, while the MDC has rejected the idea of a second round in the
elections, which is mandated by the constitution if no party wins more than 50
percent in the race for head-of-state.
All of the major Western corporate and governmentally controlled press agencies
have come out in support of the opposition MDC. The leaders of this party are
given prime coverage through interviews and the publicizing of their
unsubstantiated accusations related to vote rigging, alleged violence committed
by the ZANU-PF government and its neocolonial schemes purportedly designed to
restructure the economy of Zimbabwe.
Amid massive criticism from Western press agencies and governments, South
African President Thabo Mbeki has refused to aid in the Western destabilization
efforts aimed at toppling the Zimbabwe state and the placing of the pro-Western
MDC in power. Mbeki has rejected the notion that there is a crisis in the
country requiring international intervention.
In addition, the newly elected president of the ruling African National
Congress of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, who recently visited the UK and met with
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, also refused to condemn the Zimbabwe government.
Despite the convening of a special summit of the regional Southern African
Development Community (SADC) in early April to discuss the political situation
in Zimbabwe, the grouping of 14 states in the subcontinent have not taken any
action that would interfere in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe and its ruling
ZANU-PF Party.
The right to self-determination and sovereignty
The only real program of the opposition MDC is to carry out the political and
economic designs of the Western imperialist nations and their class
collaborators inside of Zimbabwe. The MDC has every intention of returning the
farms seized by the ZANU-PF government after 2000 to the white settlers.
Also the “Look East” policy has been a specific target of the
anti-Mugabe forces because a change in this foreign policy orientation would
damage relations between Zimbabwe and China. China has been a staunch supporter
of Zimbabwe extending back to the era of the armed struggle for national
independence during the 1970s.
Moreover, the U.S. and Britain have supplied arms and economic support to those
regimes in Africa and other so-called Third World countries which carry out
their policies. In Africa, the U.S. supports the regime of Hosni Mubarak of
Egypt, which receives the second largest grant of U.S. aid, only followed by
the Israeli state in occupied Palestine.
In Latin America, the U.S. supplies massive amounts of military and economic
assistance to Colombia which is the third largest recipient of U.S., aid behind
Israel and Egypt. This U.S. assistance is provided to supposedly fight
narcoterrorism, yet the major purveyors of violence in Colombia are those
counterrevolutionary elements that have firm links to the drug trade and who
serve as a surrogate military force to prevent the Revolutionary Armed Forces
(FARC) from coming to power inside the country.
The internal political and economic problems of the nation of Zimbabwe can best
be resolved by the people themselves. It is obvious from the long history of
U.S. and UK involvement in Africa that these imperialist nations have always
been the perpetuators or supporters of slavery, colonialism and
neocolonialism.
During the many years of brutal oppression and exploitation under colonialism,
the U.S. never supported any genuine liberation movement in Africa. Since
independence the U.S. policies have only hampered these nations from gaining
genuine liberation from the economic tentacles of international finance
capital.
What has occurred in Zimbabwe over the last several years is the direct
by-product of imperialist intervention and manipulation of the political
economy of this southern African country. The government of President Robert
Mugabe, like any other sovereign state, has the right to protect its own
interests and to safeguard its people and institutions from outside forces
seeking undemocratic forms of regime change.
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