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West scared of strong African leaders This week we must return to a theme which we normally return to every year at this time: the connection between Africa�s reclamation of its assets and resources, on one hand, and Africa�s recognition and celebration of its own liberation heroes. By recognising and celebrating our liberation heroes we redefine Africa and Zimbabwe within Africa; because we understand that those who define will claim the right and the power to design, to shape Africa. In Zimbabwe�s capital, Harare this week, three events will express this war of definitions. There is the Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF), which reveals this war to define Africa and Zimbabwe in Africa because, while the organisers have tried to put a Pan-African and South-to-South accent on the fair, the resource base of the publishing industry is still pitifully dominated by a donor � NGO industry whose duty is to panic at what Professor Issa Shivji recently called the reinsurrection of African nationalism as Pan-Africanism. In the aftermath of structural adjustment and Zimbabwe�s belated condemnation and abandonment of it, we notice at the ZIBF the lingering sway of neoliberalism and its donor � NGO industry of indoctrination intended to maintain the white imperial panic about Africa in general and Southern Africa in particular. As a result there just aren�t enough African books being published. The second event is the state funeral for liberation war hero and national hero Cde Mark Dube at the Heroes Acre on Friday, 6 August, to be followed by Defence Forces Day celebrations at Rufaro Stadium on Tuesday 10 August 2004. The unsuspecting visitor might not understand why we make such a fuss about these events. In the first place, we understand the strategic importance of the Southern African region in US and European policies. The US and European imperial interests in our region have intensified, with the realisation that Zimbabwe and South Africa may determine the future of platinum and other strategic minerals. Platinum is important for the manufacture of catalytic converters and other devices used in the control of pollution and the development of environmentally friendly technologies. Platinum holds the key to the development of hydrogen fuel as an alternative to fossil fuels. And the United States and its allies have already determined that hydrogen is the fuel of the future. Readers may remember that in the 1970s the US openly violated UN sanctions imposed on the Smith regime because US strategists believed that Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) was their only source of the strategic metal chrome outside the Soviet bloc. Now we have platinum and other minerals added to that chrome. The white imperialist attitude which determines how the Southern Africa region is defined and treated was expressed most fully by white South Africa�s High Commissioner to Britain in 1951; and it was restated by US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in his 1969 study of Southern Africa called National Security Memorandum 39. I have in front of me Page 659 of the colonial magazine East Africa and Rhodesia for 22 February 1951. It reports the speech by Dr A.L. Geyer, apartheid South Africa�s High Commissioner to London. Dr Geyer delivered the speech before Britain�s Royal Empire Society in February 1951. The apartheid High Commissioner spoke, defining our region, on behalf of all white imperialist and colonialist interests: "One fact can be put quite dogmatically: in the interest of both Europe and [settler] Africa, the latter must be kept within the European orbit. Europe needs Africa. Africa needs Europe no less. ". . . Huge resources wait to be tapped [including platinum], and only the West can supply the necessary capital and technical knowledge . . . For many years to come this huge area will require to be ruled by European colonial powers." Five years after Geyer�s speech, Britain was caught up in the so-called Suez Crisis, where the imperial powers fought to prevent Egypt from taking full control of the Suez Canal. Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, Permanent Undersecretary of State at the British Foreign Office, advised his Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd in very revealing terms concerning the importance of Africa to the British Empire: "It seems to me that there is a certain analogy . . . between our [British] attitude to America over China, and theirs to us over the Middle East [and Africa]. There is only one substantial difference. The Americans never believed that the Chinese would wreck them, at all events for a very long time. But for the reasons I have outlined . . . we, rightly or wrongly, believe that if we are denied the resources of Africa and the Middle East, we can be wrecked [destroyed!] within a year or two." In other words, the destiny of Africa must be defined and shaped in such a way that Africa must continue to serve and save Britain and Europe. That was Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick. Now back to Dr Geyer as the chief representative of apartheid in London in 1951. He declared: "South Africa and Southern Rhodesia are not a part of Black Africa. Both have built up a permanent white population and established a modern state on European lines. In both countries it was only the presence of the whites which enabled the Bantu to multiply at an enormous rate." What these quotations mean is that anyone who tries to upset this definition and interpretation of the relationship between Africa, Africans and white racist and imperialist interests must be attacked in the most vicious terms. The threatened white man will use anything and everything to attack the threatening Africans and to defend his material interests. When speaking to his own kind, he will even acknowledge that it is he who is dependent on African resources. When Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, even the liberal Swede and UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskj�ld did not hesitate to compare Nasser in 1956 with Hitler in 1935. According to British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd: "Hammarskj�ld told me that he thought Nasser was comparable to Hitler in 1935; he had a strong feeling that the Soviets did not wish Nasser to become too powerful; he had been impressed by the general Arab resentment of Nasser�s attempt to establish an Egyptian hegemony in the Middle East. The inference clearly was that Hammarskj�ld then thought that there was a Hitlerite dictator on his way but that he could be checked." And in his book, "Suez 1956", Selwyn Lloyd several times imposed this Hitlerite definition of Nasser on his readers, even though it was completely wrong. The British Press did the same, comparing Nasser�s book called "A Philosophy of Revolution" with Hitler�s "Mein Kampf". So as we celebrate Heroes Day 2004, we must understand that European and North American imperialists are still scared of strong African leaders and strong African countries. They still believe that an alliance between Southern African states and Asia will "wreck" them within a short time. They believe that Zimbabwe�s land reclamation movement has a contagious effect on South Africa and Namibia and that it will first "wreck" the white settler stranglehold on African resources within each country before helping to weaken the overall imperial stranglehold on the region. As a result we notice that a big propaganda industry is in place to continue the white panic against the liberation movements. This industry uses imperialist outlets mis-named as NGOs; it uses sponsored media, especially those funded by George Soros and a string of agencies funded by USAID. The strategy is to Africanise the white panic so that it becomes permanent. In 1956, British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd and UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskj�ld rejoiced in the fact that some Arab stooges in the Middle East were willing to panic at Nasser�s revolution on behalf of Euro-American imperial interests. Today, the same interests are funding the neo-apartheid Press and selected journalists in the whole Southern African region in order to Africanise the white panic and so make it permanent. A few recent examples are worth noting: As the land reclamation movement takes hold in Namibia and an election there approaches, we notice that an organisation calling itself The National Society of Human Rights has published a report claiming that the decade or so which Namibians have enjoyed as a free people is now being described as a disastrous period in which "human rights deteriorated dramatically". The report makes no reference to the period of military occupation of Namibia by apartheid forces which ended only in 1990. So it is not clear what the reference point is for the "deteriorating human rights". Have the lives of Namibians, in fact, become worse since the end of apartheid occupation in 1990? � In South Africa itself, we notice a rising campaign in the new apartheid media against the ANC government. A recent example is the Mail and Guardian story (30 July to 5 August 2004) which is called "South Africa shakes hands with the devil. . . South Africa cosies up to [President Teodoro Obiang] Nguema" of Equatorial Guinea. The idea here is that the President of Equatorial Guinea, who was targeted for assassination by Western-sponsored mercenaries recently is an evil man who should not be welcomed in South Africa, even though many of the mercenaries targeting him were from South Africa itself. Now, many Africans believe that US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are worse than dictators. They are imperialist warmongers and liars waging an illegal war of occupation against the people of Iraq. Both leaders have been to South Africa and have been welcomed. Is President Teodoro Obiang Nguema more evil than US President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair? Coming to Zimbabwe, the Mail and Guardian of 23-29 July 2004 led with another front-page story of white imperial panic: "Mugabe cracks down on NGOs ahead of poll". NGOs are the sacred cows of neoliberal imperialism who fight to make everyone and every state institution accountable to themselves and to the imperial powers while they themselves and their imperial sponsors remain totally unaccountable. All Zimbabwe is trying to do is to demand that NGOs apply to themselves the same requirement for transparency and accountability which they have been demanding of Government and public bodies. Again on Zimbabwe, the Mail and Guardian of 16-22 July sought to bring imperial attention on itself as one of the sacred cows. It ran a front-page story headlined "Zimbabwe Government stalks the Mail and Guardian", giving the impression that the entire Government machinery in Zimbabwe had run out of priority business to attend to and was preoccupied with stalking journalists and editors. This story is pretty much the same as the one about so-called NGOs. The accountability and transparency which the Mail and Guardian demands of others must be equally demanded of the Mail and Guardian. There should be no sacred cows. Back to South Africa, we notice that the apartheid media have been trying to shoot two birds with one stone. One South African Moslem was captured in Pakistan and is suspected of having links to Al-Qaeda. This story has been used to suggest that South Africa is infested with Al-Qaeda operatives. The purpose of the exaggerations is clear: To claim that the ANC Government is not competent enough to fight terrorism, and to force that Government to treat the Moslem communities in South Africa with great suspicion. All this is to be achieved on behalf of white imperialist and white settler interests who fear that the ANC�s black empowerment programmes might one day embrace a Zimbabwe-style land reclamation revolution. The white imperialist and white settler attacks on the South African government have been so frequent that President Thabo Mbeki himself has had to reply many times through the NAC�s web-page. The African majority must therefore continue to redefine its region, its destiny, its history, in the face of the white racist panic which has been capable of purchasing some African-sounding voices to make itself permanent. The African majority must always return to the anchor of Pan-Africanism. As Professor Issa Shivji of Tanzania has put it: Amilcar Cabral. . . makes the point that "so long as imperialism is in existence, an independent African state must be a liberation movement in power, or it will not be independent." These are profound insights. First African nationalism is constituted by the struggle of the people against imperialism, thus anti-imperialism defines African nationalism. Second, nationalism, as an _expression_ of the African struggle, continues so long as imperialism exists. Third, the National Question in Africa, whose _expression_ is nationalism (and which makes anti-imperialist African leadership necessary) remains unresolved as long as there is imperialist domination. The Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" |
- Re: ugnet_: WEST SCARED OF STRONG AFRICAN LEADERS Edward Mulindwa
