Robert Mugabe: Victim or Villain?
Zimbabwe, we must never, never forget, is really about one defiant black man taking back what was stolen from his people as was his right to do. Africans have no reason to be ashamed of this.
by Amengeo Amengeo (The African Executive)
When sharks smell blood, they go into a feeding frenzy and attack relentlessly. There is feeding frenzy about Zimbabwe that preceded the June 27 run-off elections.
Thwarted in their bid to install their man Morgan Tsvangirai in power, the forces of Western neo-colonialism continue to ratchet up media pressure. Some African leaders seem to have bought into this propaganda campaign.
Stories in the Western Press about "Government-sanctioned violence" in Zimbabwe focus on lurid details quoting one-sided and opinionated anonymous sources without much verifiable data.
Remember the gory reports about Saddam's troops in Kuwait during the first Gulf War bayoneting babies in their incubators? Many of these stories later turned out to be fabrications. The same type of campaign is operating in Zimbabwe now.
Could the violence have been orchestrated by external forces attempting to force a crisis of chaos, thereby justifying intervention? Mugabe's suspension of aid agencies' involvement was a matter of national survival. The outspoken comments of the US ambassador went beyond his purview as a resident diplomat and entered the restricted area of direct interference in a sovereign country's internal affairs.
The struggle for control of Zimbabwe has never been about democracy. We need to be absolutely clear about that. The struggle for control of Zimbabwe is about, and has always been about whether Africans will rule themselves or be subordinated to the dictates and whims of Western powers.
When one considers there are at least half a dozen African leaders who actually brutalise their people and have ruled their respective countries without any pretensions about democracy for longer than Mugabe, the question must be asked: why, then Mugabe?
There is a trend across Africa among certain sectors, to dismiss and devalue the ideology and values of the liberation struggle, values which encompassed the quest for freedom from foreign rule (which was a thousand times worse than anything any African dictator could dream up today. King Leopold of Belgium, for example, butchered 10 million Congolese during the scramble for Africa at the turn of the last century), the search for an African identity and ultimately, continental unification.
The implication of that struggle has never been lost on Western strategic planners – for a unified Africa, in control of vast human and natural resources, land space three times the size of the United States of America, could evolve into a military and economic giant as has China in recent years.
The implications of this vision, with the psychological consequences for Africans the world over living on the margins of societies they inhabit on sufferance in Europe and America, are world-changing. Thus, buds that sprout must be torn up like weeds before their roots can anchor and spread. Zimbabwe is such a bud.
Whatever his shortcomings, Mugabe has consistently and unequivocally stood for African independence and has demonstrated his pan-African convictions by intervening on behalf of the government of the late Laurent Kabila in the Democratic Republic of Congo when it was attacked by forces backed by Western economic interests.
Mugabe's stance vis-à-vis the West has its justification based on sound historical reasons. When the European nations scrambled for Africa's resources at the turn of the last century, Cecil Rhodes, the quintessential British imperialist (who presumptuously stamped his name on an African country) sent in his mercenaries and freebooters, butchered the Ndebele and Shona, the original owners of the land.
The Africans resisted fiercely inspired by Nehanda, a divine woman (later hung by the whites for daring to inspire and resist) but were decimated by the maxim machine gun, a new weapon against which they had no defence. African lands were then apportioned to the invaders and Africans were dispossessed of and driven off their lands.
When Mugabe took back the lands from the whites in 2000, he was acting legitimately and righting a century-old wrong. Talk about the "rule of law" and that he should have followed legal protocol is absolute nonsense – for when Rhodes' thieves and mercenaries invaded, they exercised no legalities, but simply killed and stole the land just as their contemporaries had done with the indigenous people of America and Australia.
As the so-called Rhodesians, faced defeat by Mugabe's guerrilla armies, Britain, which had previously refused to intervene on behalf of the Africans against their "kith and kin", scrambled to arrange a peace deal before suffering a humiliating defeat. The warring parties were invited to Lancaster House in London where the British bugged the hotel rooms of the Africans and thus checkmated their best moves. The British promised to fund the land reform, which was the casus belli for the war, but typically had no intentions of so doing. In 2000, faced with a rising demand for land reform, Mugabe acted.
This was unforgiveable.
As Cuba remains unforgiveable for manifesting independence, so does Zimbabwe remain unforgivable for exercising her right to reclaim land that rightfully belongs to Africans. Behind all the high-flown talk about "property rights" and the "rule of law" lies white racism, a sense of white entitlement, and that Africans have no right to redress the wrongs perpetrated against them so brutally and for so long.
The West, especially Britain, the US, Australia and other Europeans have no right to lecture Africans about rights and the "rule of law" given the history of their depredations – slavery, theft of lands, extermination of the Tasmanians by the Australians and genocide by the Germans against the Herero.
As African heads of state and government resolved at the recently held African Union summit in Egypt, Zimbabwe's problems are African problems and must be solved by Africans. Tsvangirai's running to Western capitals like a petulant schoolchild complaining about Mugabe is giving the West an excuse to intervene in Zimbabwe's affairs or perhaps he is truly their puppet and has to report to his masters. It is very curious that the West announced his victory ahead of even exit polls.
Frustrated by the failure of their man to win an outright victory, the West has ratcheted up the pressure in the hopes of precipitating a crisis which would allow them to intervene more directly. Mugabe's pre-emptive move against the aid agencies [which have the perfect cover for espionage] has taken critical pieces off the board. Africans need to understand that is a test of their sovereignty and independence. If Mugabe's independent voice can be stilled by Western intervention, propaganda and the collusion of local puppets, then Africa's independence becomes meaningless.
Africa can solve its own problems and it needs to assertively tell the West this. Mbeki's quiet diplomacy is an attempt to find African solutions and avoid violence and chaos, for the people of Zimbabwe refused to ride off into the sunset and give the country to a man who cavorts about Western capitals calling for sanctions and intervention against his own country and seems to speak from a script that echoes the detractors of the Government.
Zimbabwe's problems are not intractable and they can be solved by Africans working together, but the region's leaders need to speak with one voice as they did at the just-ended AU Summit, and unequivocally told the West to leave Africa alone to resolve the Zimbabwean situation, whether by a unity government or some cession of power.
Unfortunately, Tsvangirai continues to compromise his credibility by appearing as the West's man. We need not to be befuddled by talk of "democracy" which the West insists on when it meets their interests.
Zimbabwe, we must never, never forget, is really about one defiant black man taking back what was stolen from his people as was his right to do. Africans have no reason to be ashamed of this.
--Amengeo Amengeo is a specialist in Spanish, Latin American, Caribbean as well as African history. He has also been a journalist, civil servant and graphic artist.
http://www.africanexecutive.com
Posted: 2008/07/04
From: Mathaba News
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"Did you notice how quickly the enemy came to talk when Pres. Mugabe became the victor over the Whites, and it looked like he was about to take the capital? It is similar to the way the enemy “talked” with Charles Taylor when he was about to take Monrovia. The enemy wanted to make a deal with Charles Taylor and tell him, “Let’s get elections;” however, they never thought that Charles Taylor would win the election. And after he won the election, America didn’t like him; didn’t support him, and fueled a civil war against him.
Today, you have the so-called terrorist Mugabe, in Lancaster House with his comrades, arguing over the land question. When he accepted in the Constitution that for 10 years Blacks would ask Whites to give up the land, and would buy it back—that’s a hell of a compromise. Somebody stole your land and then wants you to buy back what they stole? That compromise, from the beginning, is what put Zimbabwe in the trouble that the country is in. Because when you are at war with your enemy, you’ve got to take your enemy out so that your land is yours from day one! If we had done that 20-years-ago, we would not have to do this today.
It is better to be a “terrorist” over your house, than to be a “good man” in the eyes of your enemy and not in control of your own house.
***
It is a shame that you say that you are the owners of the land, but a Black real estate businessman can’t sell a house in a White neighborhood. How are you free? Why would you accept this as your reality? You have bowed down to the enemy! And every time you bow down to them, they crush you even more. But when you stand up, now you become an enemy? That shows you that they are your enemy! Excuse me for being passionate, but I’m passionate because I love you; I love this land, and I hate to see what the enemy has done, and what he continues to do.
When you think about the former British Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, Ian Smith; and when you look at all those bodies, those skulls, and those graves—after you won the election, you don’t even bring your chief enemy to justice? You don’t try him? You allow him to live here and own land? See, that’s the goodness of your heart, because you don’t know your enemy, and you really don’t know yourself. But if you knew yourself and you knew your enemy, you would deal with your enemy like an enemy.
God has to deal with this today, and that’s why the Bible says, “Blood will be up to the horse’s bridle.” If the White man doesn’t back up, you’re going to be right back to war again. A curtain of blood is going to rise from South Africa all the way to the North, because the White man is not going to give up without a fight," Minister Farrakhan's Message to Zimbabwe
By the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan Read the complete article at:http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_4976.shtml
THIS IS VERY COMPLEX
I THINK HE IS OLD AND HE BELIEVES WHAT HE IS DOING IS RIGHT...........
HE IS NOT APPLYING HIS IDEOLOGY RIGHT THOUGH..................
HE DOES NOT HAVE THE SUPPORT OF PAN AFRIKANISM FROM THE OTHER AFRIKAN LEADERS AND THERE IN LIES THE PROBLEM
THE OTHER LEADERS OF THE CONTINENT DO NOT HAVE THE GUTS OF MUGABE TO MAKE AFRIKA AND AFRIKAN RESOURCES CONTROL BY THE BLACK AFRIKAN
THEREFORE TIME HAS NOT CAUGHT UP TO MUGABE UNFORTUNATELY!
HIS VISION HAS ALWAYS BEEN CORRECT
BUT AS THE LAST POETS SAY
NIGGAHS ARE SCARED OF REVOLUTION AND THERE IN LIES THE UGLINESS OF TH DAY IN HIS COUNTRY
WE HAVE TO LEAN FORWARD AND PRAY FOR HIM AND ALL INVOLVED
BUT FOR ME ........ITS ALWAYS
BLACK POWER!
02/07/08 "Spiked" -- -- ‘We’ve beaten Mugabe’, said a frontpage headline in the London Evening Standard yesterday. Only there were no quote marks around the words ‘We’ve beaten Mugabe’, which made it difficult to tell if the paper was reporting the thoughts of Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) upon its electoral victory over Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF Party, or its own back-slapping relish at the thought that its journalism may have played a part in toppling Mugabe. Indeed, ‘We’ve beaten Mugabe’ could be the slogan of political and media operators in Britain and elsewhere in the West, who like to fantasise that Mugabe is ‘Africa’s Hitler’, that his Zimbabwe was ‘more evil than, for example, China and Saudi Arabia’, and that it is up to the West to ‘put pressure on Zimbabwe to change’ (1).
The media reports about Zimbabwe’s elections present them as a clash between the ‘evil’ Mugabe and the ‘heroic’ Tsvangirai, an electoral battle for Zimbabwe’s soul. Mugabe is depicted as having brought Zimbabwe to its knees, causing widespread poverty and enforcing terror and repression, and Tsvangirai is discussed as the harbinger of a dignified ‘revolution’ against Mugabeism (2). This is a fantasy. It ignores the key role played by Western governments and financial institutions in using sanctions, tough diplomacy and the proxy interventionists of the South Africa government and the African Union to isolate and harry Zimbabwe over the past decade. Such self-serving external meddling has contributed to Zimbabwe’s economic crisis - and it has dangerously distorted the political dynamics inside Zimbabwe and elsewhere in the south of Africa.
Over the past 10 years, American and European governments cynically transformed Mugabe’s Zimbabwe into the West’s whipping boy in Africa, the state they love to hate, a country against which they can enforce tough sanctions to demonstrate their seriousness about standing up to ‘evil’. The West has imposed economic sanctions on Zimbabwe, warned off foreign investors, denied Zimbabwean officials the right to travel freely around the world, demonised Mugabe as an ‘evil dictator’, discussed the idea of military action against Zimbabwe, and used moral and financial blackmail to cajole South Africa’s president Thabo Mbeki to ‘deal with’ Mugabe (3).....
Greetings!! you obviously don,t understand basic English.So for the record,let me say that."When ever one from outside the family"starts to dictate to the family about family affairs ,it is not only disrspectful of our countries soveriegnty,but also that the right to govern our-selves as Africans with our in-alienable rights is taken advantage off."Shame on you brother for mis-conscruing my words".Black Power!!!
https://theblacklist.net/
Replies
Today, you have the so-called terrorist Mugabe, in Lancaster House with his comrades, arguing over the land question. When he accepted in the Constitution that for 10 years Blacks would ask Whites to give up the land, and would buy it back—that’s a hell of a compromise. Somebody stole your land and then wants you to buy back what they stole? That compromise, from the beginning, is what put Zimbabwe in the trouble that the country is in. Because when you are at war with your enemy, you’ve got to take your enemy out so that your land is yours from day one! If we had done that 20-years-ago, we would not have to do this today.
It is better to be a “terrorist” over your house, than to be a “good man” in the eyes of your enemy and not in control of your own house.
***
It is a shame that you say that you are the owners of the land, but a Black real estate businessman can’t sell a house in a White neighborhood. How are you free? Why would you accept this as your reality? You have bowed down to the enemy! And every time you bow down to them, they crush you even more. But when you stand up, now you become an enemy? That shows you that they are your enemy! Excuse me for being passionate, but I’m passionate because I love you; I love this land, and I hate to see what the enemy has done, and what he continues to do.
When you think about the former British Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, Ian Smith; and when you look at all those bodies, those skulls, and those graves—after you won the election, you don’t even bring your chief enemy to justice? You don’t try him? You allow him to live here and own land? See, that’s the goodness of your heart, because you don’t know your enemy, and you really don’t know yourself. But if you knew yourself and you knew your enemy, you would deal with your enemy like an enemy.
God has to deal with this today, and that’s why the Bible says, “Blood will be up to the horse’s bridle.” If the White man doesn’t back up, you’re going to be right back to war again. A curtain of blood is going to rise from South Africa all the way to the North, because the White man is not going to give up without a fight,"
Minister Farrakhan's Message to Zimbabwe
By the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan
Read the complete article at: http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_4976.shtml
I THINK HE IS OLD AND HE BELIEVES WHAT HE IS DOING IS RIGHT...........
HE IS NOT APPLYING HIS IDEOLOGY RIGHT THOUGH..................
HE DOES NOT HAVE THE SUPPORT OF PAN AFRIKANISM FROM THE OTHER AFRIKAN LEADERS AND THERE IN LIES THE PROBLEM
THE OTHER LEADERS OF THE CONTINENT DO NOT HAVE THE GUTS OF MUGABE TO MAKE AFRIKA AND AFRIKAN RESOURCES CONTROL BY THE BLACK AFRIKAN
THEREFORE TIME HAS NOT CAUGHT UP TO MUGABE UNFORTUNATELY!
HIS VISION HAS ALWAYS BEEN CORRECT
BUT AS THE LAST POETS SAY
NIGGAHS ARE SCARED OF REVOLUTION AND THERE IN LIES THE UGLINESS OF TH DAY IN HIS COUNTRY
WE HAVE TO LEAN FORWARD AND PRAY FOR HIM AND ALL INVOLVED
BUT FOR ME ........ITS ALWAYS
BLACK POWER!
Western intervention against Robert Mugabe’s ‘evil regime’ put Zimbabwe into an economic straitjacket and disempowered its people.
By Brendan O’Neill
02/07/08 "Spiked" -- -- ‘We’ve beaten Mugabe’, said a frontpage headline in the London Evening Standard yesterday. Only there were no quote marks around the words ‘We’ve beaten Mugabe’, which made it difficult to tell if the paper was reporting the thoughts of Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) upon its electoral victory over Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF Party, or its own back-slapping relish at the thought that its journalism may have played a part in toppling Mugabe. Indeed, ‘We’ve beaten Mugabe’ could be the slogan of political and media operators in Britain and elsewhere in the West, who like to fantasise that Mugabe is ‘Africa’s Hitler’, that his Zimbabwe was ‘more evil than, for example, China and Saudi Arabia’, and that it is up to the West to ‘put pressure on Zimbabwe to change’ (1).
The media reports about Zimbabwe’s elections present them as a clash between the ‘evil’ Mugabe and the ‘heroic’ Tsvangirai, an electoral battle for Zimbabwe’s soul. Mugabe is depicted as having brought Zimbabwe to its knees, causing widespread poverty and enforcing terror and repression, and Tsvangirai is discussed as the harbinger of a dignified ‘revolution’ against Mugabeism (2). This is a fantasy. It ignores the key role played by Western governments and financial institutions in using sanctions, tough diplomacy and the proxy interventionists of the South Africa government and the African Union to isolate and harry Zimbabwe over the past decade. Such self-serving external meddling has contributed to Zimbabwe’s economic crisis - and it has dangerously distorted the political dynamics inside Zimbabwe and elsewhere in the south of Africa.
Over the past 10 years, American and European governments cynically transformed Mugabe’s Zimbabwe into the West’s whipping boy in Africa, the state they love to hate, a country against which they can enforce tough sanctions to demonstrate their seriousness about standing up to ‘evil’. The West has imposed economic sanctions on Zimbabwe, warned off foreign investors, denied Zimbabwean officials the right to travel freely around the world, demonised Mugabe as an ‘evil dictator’, discussed the idea of military action against Zimbabwe, and used moral and financial blackmail to cajole South Africa’s president Thabo Mbeki to ‘deal with’ Mugabe (3).....
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