Zïmßåßwê

[Username]

.

Democracy Now

June 26, 2008

Zimbabwe and the Question of Imperialism: A Discussion
In Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe has come under widespread criticism for refusing to cancel a run-off election scheduled for Friday. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the first round of elections in March but withdrew from the run-off late last week. He has sought refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare out of what he says is concern for his life. We host a discussion on Zimbabwe with University of Houston Professor, Gerald Horne, author of “From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War Against Zimbabwe, 1965-1980” and Syracuse University University Professor, Horace Campbell, his latest article is titled, “Pan-Africanists: Our collective duty to Zimbabwe.

Criticism of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and the actions of his ruling Zanu PF party is growing. The most recent condemnation comes from former South African President Nelson Mandela, who mourned the “tragic failure of leadership” in Zimbabwe on Wednesday. They were the former leader’s first comments on the situation.

President Bush also criticized Mugabe Wednesday for defying international pressure to cancel a run-off election scheduled for Friday.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the first round of elections in March but withdrew from the run off late on Sunday and sought refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare out of what he says is concern for his safety. On Wednesday he called for the African Union backed by the United Nations, to lead a “transitional process” in Zimbabwe. He also emphasized that Friday’s vote would not be recognized.

But Zimbabwe’s Electoral Commission has ruled that Tsvangirai’s withdrawal from the election last Sunday was filed too late and has no legal force. Meanwhile at least 300 Harare residents have taken shelter from the political violence at the South African embassy.

Today we host a discussion on Zimbabwe: We’re joined in Washington DC by Professor Gerald Horne. He is the Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston and the author of numerous books including “From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War Against Zimbabwe, 1965-1980.” Joining us on the phone from Syracuse, New York is Professor Horace Campbell. He is Professor of African American Studies and Politics at Syracuse University. He has written extensively about Pan-Africanism and Zimbabwe.

Gerald Horne, Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston and the author of numerous books including “From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War Against Zimbabwe, 1965-1980.”

Horace Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Politics at Syracuse University. He has written extensively about Pan-Africanism and Zimbabwe.


AMY GOODMAN:As we move now from Iraq to Zimbabwe, Juan?


JUAN GONZALES:Well criticism of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and the
actions of his ruling Zanu PF party is growing. The most recent condemnation comes from former South African President Nelson Mandela who mourned the quote tragic failure of leadership in Zimbabwe on Wednesday. They were the former leaders first comments on the situation president Bush also criticized Mugabe Wednesday for defying international pressure to cancel a runoff election scheduled for Friday.


PRESIDENT BUSH: Friday’s elections appear to be a sham. You can’t have free elections if a candidate is not allowed to campaign freely and his supporters aren’t allowed to campaign without fear of intimidation—yet the Mugabe government has been intimidating the people on the ground in Zimbabwe. And this is an incredibly sad development. I hope that the AU will, at their meeting this weekend, continue to highlight the illegitimacy of the elections, continue to remind the world that this election is not free, and is not fair.


JUAN GONZALES: Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the first round of elections in March but withdrew from the runoff late on Sunday and sought refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harari out of what he says is concern for his safety. On Wednesday he called for the African Union backed the United Nations to lead a quote transitional process in Zimbabwe. He also emphasized that Friday’s vote would not be recognized.


TSVANGIRAI: That our decision to pull out of this shame election was in the best interest of the people of Zimbabwe. Any election conducted arrogantly, unilaterally on Friday will not be recognized by the MDC, by Zimbabweans and by the world over.


JUAN GONZALES: But Zimbabwe’s electoral commission has ruled that Tsvangirai’s withdrawal from the election last Sunday was filed too late and has no legal force. Meanwhile at least 300 Harari residents have taken shelter from the political violence at the South African embassy.


MAN SPEAKING: My house is destroyed to the ground level. And my whole apartment has been destroyed and looted, and my family-–I do not know where my family is right now. I don’t know where my wife, my kids.


AMY GOODMAN: Today, we host a discussion on Zimbabwe. We’re joined in Washington D.C. by Professor Gerald Horne, Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston and the author of numerous books including “From the Barrel of a Gun, the United States in the War Against Zimbabwe, 1965 to 1980.” Joining us on the phone from Syracuse is Professor Horace Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Politics at Syracuse University in New York, has written extensively about Pan-Africanism and Zimbabwe. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! I want to begin with Gerald Horne in Washington. Can you talk about what is happening in Zimbabwe and the coverage of it, how we understand what is happening in Zimbabwe in the United States?


GERALD HORNE: Well obviously what is happening in Zimbabwe is quite tragic and I would hope some of the sympathy that is extended to Zimbabwe could be extended as well to other African nations that do not have white minorities. For example, the statement condemning or questioning the Zimbabweans elections emerged from Swaziland, a South African nation that is one of the last absolute monarchies on this small planet. Some might well question why isn’t Swaziland’s human rights situation being interrogated and investigated? A scant year ago in Nigeria, the continent’s giant, you had shambolic elections, had hundreds killed yet that barely registered a blip on the international media. At least not in the North Atlantic. Many talk, perhaps understandably, about the fact the President Mugabe has served as President since 1980, but what about Omar Bongo of Gabon, a close ally of the U.S, an oil-rich country in West Africa, which of course, he has served as president since 1967? 13 years before Mugabe came into power. I mean, I could go on in this vain, but I think the fact that thousands were killed in Zimbabwe in the 1980’s and yet, he received a virtual knighthood from Queen Elizabeth and received an honorary degree from Massachusetts, and yet, today in 2008, he is a subject of international scorn after of course he expropriates some white farmers, really speaks of profound racism in terms of how this issue has been covered in the North Atlantic media.


JUAN GONZALES: Horace Campbell, I want to ask about this issue. It does seem that the western media did not focus on Zimbabwe at all until the expropriations began of land. But does that deal with—the land of the white-minority there-–but does that deal with the underlying class conflicts that are obviously clearly percolating in reaching ahead right now in the country?


HORACE CAMPBELL: Well, thank you for having me on the show. First of all, I would say this platform on Democracy Now! is a platform for the progressives, the left, and those who are involved in the peace movement. Our discussions on what is going on in Zimbabwe or any other part of Africa should be guided by how our solidarity with the peoples of Zimbabwe, with the oppressed workers of Southern Africa, and in all parts of Africa can assist our own struggle in this country against all forms of oppression. And so, comparing Zimbabwean’s oppression with other oppression in Africa does not excuse the oppression of the Zimbabweans people by any means. I think Gerald is very right about these oppressions across Africa, but organizations in this country that are in solidarity with the peace movement across the world ,that are in solidarity with the Zimbabwe people, should take the cue from the Congress of South African Trade Union that is calling for a blockade of Zimbabwe because of the oppression. And I think what distinguished Zimbabwe from those countries that Gerald speaks about is that none of those countries is representing themselves as being in the forefront of liberation. Robert Mugabe and Zanupe started out like they were Lumumba in the Congo. They ended up like Mubutu, killing from the people, arrested opposition leaders, killing people, calling homosexual pigs and dogs, and killing hundreds, tens of thousands of people. 18% of the Zimbabwean people are unemployed. While the stock exchange is the most successful in Africa. We on the left, in the peace movement, we acknowledge that George Bush nor Brown have any moral authority to criticize Zimbabwe because of the unjust war that they’re fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. But having said that, we on the left and the progressives, we must take the moral leadership in having solidarity with those opposition leaders, those workers, those human rights workers in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa who are being oppressed by the Mugabe government.


AMY GOODMAN: Your response, Gerald Horne?


GERALD HORNE: Well I think there is very much to recommend with what Horace Campbell said. As a taxpayer to this government here in Washington, my first approach must be this regime of George W. Bush. And I think we have to question the hypocrisy of George Bush who has engaged in questionable elections in Florida and Ohio, questioning the legitimacy of the elections in Zimbabwe. More than that, if the situation in Zimbabwe is so terrible, and I agree it is, why is it that the Bush administration continues to send undocumented Zimbabwe workers back to Zimbabwe? There’s been talk about a so- called genocide unfolding in Zimbabwe, yet, you see the Gordon Brown administration in London not giving asylum to Zimbabwe workers who are exiled now in London. We talk about the Mugabe regime, but just the other day it was revealed that Anglo American, the major transnational corporation with close South African ties and headquarters in London, is about to make a $400 million investment in Zimbabwe. Barclay’s bank is in Zimbabwe. Rio Tinto-Zinc, the major mineral conglomerate is in Zimbabwe. It seems to me in the first place, we in the North Atlantic should be focusing on these kinds of contradictions that we can affect and as the African National Congress has said, leave Zimbabwe to the Zimbabwean people themselves.


AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to a break and we’ll come back to this discussion. Our guests in Washington, Professor. Gerald Horne, Professor of African Studies at the University of Houston, he has lived in Zimbabwe, Professor Horace Campbell also joins us, professor of African- American studies at Syracuse University. We will be back with them both in a moment.

[music break]


AMY GOODMAN: This is democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. We’re talking about Zimbabwe. Professor Gerald Horne of the University of Houston is in Washington, Professor Horace Campbell of African American Studies and Political Science of Syracuse University is speaking to us from Syracuse. If you could respond, Professor Campbell, to what Gerald Horne said before the break.


HORACE CAMPBELL: Yes, I want to reiterate a point that any kind of political work we do on Zimbabwe should assist us in educating our people here so that when the Zimbabwe political leadership represents itself to say that it is being persecuted because it expropriated the land of the former white settlers, we have to interrogate what did the expropriation of the land mean for the millions of Zimbabweans workers, small farmers. It is very clear that the Zimbabwean people needed to reclaim the land from the white settlers. But the Mugabe government, when he was receiving his knighthood from the british government, never negotiated about the land because throughout the period from 1980- 1992, Zimbabwe had the legal powers to be able to set in motion the possibilities for strengthening the working peoples, the farm workers, the women, the plantation and agricultural workers. And hen we speak about land, we must understand that whether the land is owned by white farmers are black farmers, the fundamental productivity on the land emanates from the labor of the working people—working people. So our task is how is it we defend the working people of Zimbabwe? The hundreds of thousands of workers who live on the conditions of wretchedness, who have been exploited by the black capitalist farmers, who are in the Zimbabwean government just as the whites have done. So any kind of transition in Zimbabwe must involve strengthening the rights of the workers, the women, and the use in Zimbabwe. I think that what Gerald said should throw away all of the talk about Mugabe been against imperialism because it was very clear that anglo- American, Barclay bank, and Rio-Tinto and diamond dealers have made billions of dollars while Mugabe was talking about the land. And what we’re calling for is for any transitional period in Zimbabwe to be one where there is intervention by the African Union so that the billions that have been carried out by the ruling elements in Zimbabwe, that we do not have them carried out repression of the workers with impunity and then stealing the money as they have done the past 8-10 years.


JUAN GONZALES: Gerald Horne, I’d like to ask you. Obviously Mugabe has been an icon and a hero, a giant in terms of the liberation movements in Africa for decades. But your sense now, do you believe that he still represents any forces for progress in Africa or has he gradually transformed himself into a dictator?


GERALD HORNE: Well, I think that president Mugabe is a force to be reckoned with in Zimbabwe. And I agree with those leaders in the region who feel that he and his party must be contented with if there is to be a settlement of this controversy in Zimbabwe. I should also say that with regard to professor Campbell, I’m here not to carry a brief on OPS, but they have argued they did not move on land reform before 1994, i.e. the date of the South African elections, so as not to unsettle the situation in neighboring South Africa, which of course has outstanding land claims of its own. We all know there are more white farmers killed in South Africa than have been killed in Zimbabwe. And likewise, there are outstanding land claims in neighboring Namibia as well. I think it’s understandable why there has been a focus on on Zanu PF, but standing in the wings of the opposition of the MDC and sadly, unfortunately, there has not been considerable focus on them such as their leaders, Roy Bennet, a top leader, a former major land owner in Zimbabwe who of course throttled an African leader on the floor of the Zimbabweans parliament—I would of thought that kind of behavior would have ended in independence in 1980. You have other leading Rhodesians in the leadership of MDC. One thing that worries many of us is that if MDC does come to power, there will be a split and quite frankly, they will pave the way for the rise of certain retrograde elements like Roy Bennet come back into power. In some ways, MDC, a trade union-led movement, is akin to solidarity in Poland which of course paved the way for the present right wing in Poland to come to power in Warsaw. So we have to be careful when we try to butt in to the internal affairs of a sovereign
state. I think our energies would be best served by putting pressure on this government here in Washington and its comical sidekick in London.


AMY GOODMAN: Professor Horace Campbell?


HORACE CAMPBELL: The intellectual subservience of the MDC and the leadership ofthe MDC is clear to most workers in Southern Africa. But this point in the history of Zimbabwe, the MDC doesn’t have political power. The social forces that are organized in Zimbabwe against the government have thrown their weight behind the MDC at the present moment. The Women of Zimbabwe rise, these are independent organizations, Padari, the workers, agricultural and plantation workers. I do not think—we do not have the right to say to the Zimbabwean workers that your under oppression and therefore, we should decide for you because of the history of Mugabe’s relationship to the liberation movement, 28 years ago, then we should be saying to you what your choices should be. In Southern Africa, the Congress of South African Trade Union movement has called for a blockade of the Zimbabwean government and is the Zimbabwe leadership and the Congress of South African Trade Union which is the largest trade union movement in Southern Africa is a movement which is calling for the isolation of Mugabe government. What we agree with Gerald is on as the falling—the land question in Southern Africa is an urgent question in the media, in south Africa, and in Zimbabwe. But having said that, we must learn lessons from Zimbabwe. To say that when land his been reclaimed it should not be reclaimed for rich, black farmers to replace white farmers. Land when it is being reclaimed in South Africa or in Nambia should be reclaimed in a condition where there is health and safety conditions for the working people’s. So yes, we should take
lessons from Zimbabwe and we should introduce new politics in Southern Africa that is coming out of the politics of reconciliation. That no concept of victory should be victory which gives power to one group over another there should be ways in which the transition towards a new political dispersion—in south Africa it is one that strengthens the producing classes, the small workers, farmers, students. And these are the forces that have been repressed, brutalized, the trade union leaders that are in jail right now in Zimbabwe should be released. Opposition leaders should be released. Women should be released. Human rights workers should be released. So that yes, we can criticize the leadership of the MDC and I have done so in my writing, in my book, “Reclaiming Zimbabwe” but the government of Zimbabwe must now arise in a situation where we provide leadership in a condition where 80% of the people are unemployed, where women have been persecuted as prostitutes when a walk on the streets. Were homosexuals have been called pigs and dogs and where men go around trying to have sexual relations with young virgins saying this would prevent HIV/AIDS. We need a new political leadership to go against this kind of backwardness that came out of the kind of patriotic leadership that we had for the past 28 years.


AMY GOODMAN: We wanted to bring South African archbishop Desmond Tutu into this. He also came out forcefully against the violence and intimidation in Zimbabwe speaking in Cape Town Tuesday, who warned Mugabe should bend to international pressure or could risk facing universal sanctions and could risk facing an international criminal court.


TUTU: We are seeing a country not just steadily, but rapidly going down into chaos. The international community should, I believe, had intervened long ago when some of us appeared for a peacekeeping force, to ensure that people who are not intimidated, people are not attacked. And that the conditions for a free and fair election would then have been sustained. Now, I think obviously the effort should continue where we are hoping against hope that good sense might get to prevail and that Mr.Mugabe would agree that really his time is up. It’s 20 years or more that he has been head of state. I think they’ve got to tell him he still less the chance—if he continues and everyone decides to grant his administration illegitimate, then he stands a very very good chance of being arraigned before the ICC for human rights violations.


AMY GOODMAN: Archbishop Desmond Tutu Gerald Horne, your response both to Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Horace Campbell.


GERALD HORNE: Well obviously we have enormous respect for Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But I must return to the question that should occupy us in the North Atlantic. Which is why is it the Zimbabwe gets so much focus and attention on this side of the Atlantic when Paul Biya, the leader of Cameron a few weeks ago basically named himself President for life and it barely registers a blip? Similar situation unfolding in Uganda with Yoweri Museveni. I think part of the reason, not only the race and racism question, there’s also the question that many of the former Rhodesian have kith and kin on the side of the Atlantic. The spouse of Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. Secretary of State. The spouse of Chester Crocker, the former assistant Secretary of State for Africa under the Reagan administration. Even some distant relatives of George Washington for whom the city of which I’m sitting is named. Ian Smith, the former Rhodesian leader of course has relatives in San Diego. There were hundreds
if not thousands of white mercenaries who flocked to Rhodesia in the 1970’s and 1980’s to fight against liberation of that particular country. And it befuddles and baffles me why this kind of basic historical background is not integrated into the conversation, integrated into the discourse on Zimbabwe. I think it gives a very bad impression on the African continent which leads many Africans to consider their only focus on the North Atlantic is on Zimbabwe because there is a white minority and that perhaps explains to why there has been such a lethargy in responding to some of the human rights violations that are unfolding in Zimbabwe. And until that kind of situation is rectified, I dare say there will continue to be an uncivil situation in Zimbabwe.


JUAN GONZALES: Gerald, all that being true and we clearly recognize that disparity in approach and coverage, back in 2005, there were massive forced relocations of hundreds of thousands of people by the Mugabe government that really stunned people, even here in a progressive community of the United States who have supported Mugabe and the past. Your response to those relocations and again to the issue of whether the government has increasingly become iron handed and dictatorial in dealing with its own people?


GERALD HORNE: Well, those dislocations were tragic and unfortunate. I know about them because I hail from St. Louis, Missouri. And of course it used to be said, with regard to that city and many other cities, that urban renewal meant negro removal. That kind of situation is not unique to Zimbabwe. In Senegal as we speak, there been tens of thousands of Africans who have been displaced because of a civil conflict there reaches back 25 years. It has barely registered a blip on the international press screen. So yes, those situations that are referred to in Zimbabwe are quite tragic and they need to be criticized as well as other analogous situations. And when those analogous situations are not criticized, it basically provides fodder for those who would like to downplay the situation in Zimbabwe.


AMY GOODMAN: Professor Horace Campbell, we just have about 30 seconds, your response and your summary?


HORACE CAMPBELL: My response is that the government of Senegal, the government of Cameroon does not represent itself as a liberation government. The
Zimbabwean government is very aware of the racism that exists in North America. And it is exploiting that racism and the antiracist sentiment among Africans in the west in order to legitimize its repression on the people. The government of Zimbabwe at this moment is illegitimate we must avoid war at all costs. Mugabe says only god can remove him and he will go to war. At present, he is at war with the Zimbabwe people and we must end the silence in the progressive and pan-African community against this type of manipulation and repression in the name of liberation.


AMY GOODMAN: We will leave it there. Professor Horace Campbell of Syracuse University and Professor Gerald Horne of Houston University, thank you for joining us. That does it for today’s show, if you want a copy of the show go to democracynow.org, tomorrow night I’ll be at Des Moines, Iowa at Simpsons College, tomorrow morning at ten in Fairfield Iowa at the library, and Tuesday night the Aspen Ideas Festival.

End


Socialist Worker
dated 14 April 2007 | issue 2046

Posted: 10 April 2007

Zimbabwe: from liberation to dictatorship

The struggle against white rule in Zimbabwe in the 1970s galvanised a generation in the hope of a new Africa. Now the country has become a byword for repression. Leo Zeilig traces the death of a dream

On 18 April 1980 the Union Jack was pulled down, the Zimbabwean flag raised and Bob Marley and the Wailers played live to thousands. Zimbabwe was independent.

The victory over the Rhodesian regime of Ian Smith was celebrated around the world. Prime minister Robert Mugabe was the incarnation of the struggle that had bought Zimbabwe’s freedom.

Zimbabwe emerged out of the authoritarian and racist state established by the British a century previously. In 1890 the territory was marked out and handed to the imperialist adventurer Cecil Rhodes, who controlled the area for his British South Africa Company.

The following 40 years witnessed the mass expropriation of land from peasant farmers, the repression of any resistance, and forced labour in mines and factories. Thousands of Africans were forced off their land and herded into “communal lands”, or reservations.

In 1962 the Rhodesian Front, a right wing party headed by the racist

Ian Smith, won power. Smith declared independence from Britain in 1965, in what was called a Unilateral Declaration of Independence.

The decision to declare independence was made in the context of the growth of resistance in Rhodesia and rising politicisation.

Smith ruled with an iron fist. His government killed thousands of so-called terrorists and herded rural Zimbabweans into concentration camps to cut them off from the nationalist freedom fighters.

Robert Gabriel Mugabe was among a group of radical nationalists that formed the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) in 1963. He showed his personal commitment to the struggle – he spent the decade from 1964 in a variety of prison camps and jails.

By the end of 1978 the united nationalist armed forces were somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000 strong. The government’s forces were engaged on approximately six fronts, with martial law imposed throughout the whole country.

In 1980 liberation had been won. Mugabe was the radical voice of Zimbabwean freedom, promising before independence that “none of the white exploiters will be allowed to keep an acre of their land”.

He vowed to end the massive inequalities in Zimbabwean society where more than 80 percent of industrial production was controlled by foreign capital and only 4,000 mostly white farmers controlled 70 percent of the most fertile land.

In the early 1980s the new government increased spending on health and education. Enrolment increased in primary education from 1.2 million in 1980 to more than 2.2 million by 1989, and in secondary schools from only 74,000 to 671,000 in the same period.

Arthur Mutambara, now a leader of the MDC opposition, remembers how he worshipped Mugabe, “He was my hero, I used to idolise him. I was sold to the socialist agenda and Zanu was our party of revolution.”

But independence in Zimbabwe had been won on strict conditions. The 1979 Lancaster House agreement that led directly to independence guaranteed that the property rights of the white majority would be safeguarded.

Mugabe left the farmers untouched. They were now not the “colonialists” and “imperialists” but rather useful allies to the regime.

The compromises, delays and ultimately the failure to confront the issue of redistribution were representative of Mugabe’s general approach.

He preached reconciliation with his old enemies, “If yesterday I fought you as an enemy, today you have become a friend. If yesterday you hated me, today you cannot avoid the love that binds you to me and me to you.”

As one person observed, “Despite its Marxist-Leninist rhetoric the Zanu-PF government tried to preserve the largely white-owned productive structures.”

The old structures of state repression remained intact.

Zanu massacred black opponents in Matabeleland, in the south of the country. It has been estimated that between 1981 and 1988 between 10,000 and 20,000 “dissidents”’ were killed.

The main trade union federation, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), was packed with Mugabe’s friends.

However, by the mid-1980s the economy had begun to stagnate. From 1986 per capita GDP declined rapidly. Loans from the World Bank were accepted by the government, causing foreign debt to rise from £400 million in 1980 to £1.5 billion in 1990.

The government introduced the first full Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) in 1991.

Following similar – and similarly disastrous – programmes in most of Africa, the World Bank and the IMF insisted on the removal of import controls, changes to what was regarded as “restrictive” labour legislation and widespread public sector reforms.

Strikes

The effects of these reforms were devastating. The year after the implementation of the ESAP saw an 11 percent fall in GDP. In 1993 unemployment reached a record 1.3 million from a total population of about 10 million.

New militancy was born out of the attacks. The old leadership of the ZCTU was replaced by a new one. In 1988 Morgan Tsvangirai – a mine worker and activist – became general secretary of the ZCTU.

In 1996 Zimbabwean society exploded. In August there was the first national government workers’ strike. Tens of thousands came out on strike against job losses, bad working conditions and government corruption. As the strike continued it developed clearly political aims.

An elected committee of rank and file trade unionists directed the strike. Flying pickets moved from workplace to workplace arguing with workers to join the movement.

The following year saw more demonstrations and strikes than at any time since independence. As Tendai Beti, a leading activist at the time, remembers, “You could smell working class power in the air.”

University students, informal traders and workers recently made redundant joined the struggle. Brian Kagoro, a student leader in 1997, recalls, “You now had students supporting their parents on their grants, because their parents had been laid off work. As poverty increased you had a convergence of these forces.”

Former fighters from the guerrilla war against the Rhodesian state became galvanised by the mass upheavals. These war veterans denounced Mugabe.

The ZCTU repeatedly sought to lead and direct the mass movement. Rank and file activists, often organising in labour forums – where large groups of workers met to discuss politics – rushed ahead of union bureaucrats in organising strikes and demonstrations.

From 1998 a recurrent theme of the labour forums was the demand for the ZCTU to form a workers’ party.

Finally in September 1999 the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was born, and Morgan Tsvangirai became the movement’s first leader. The MDC was formed directly out of the ZCTU, promising redistribution of wealth to the poor. The mood in the country was jubilant.

The party almost won the parliamentary election in 2000, winning 57 of 120 elected seats. The fact that it came close to toppling such a violent regime after having only existed for 16 months is an indication of the extent of the changes that were sweeping Zimbabwean society.

The MDC retained a working class base, but various NGOs, academics, businessmen and lawyers had added their voices to the calls for a new opposition. So the demands for a new party carried a contradiction.

On the one hand they came from the labour forums and the streets, who wanted an end to privatisation, anti-union laws and the power of big business.

But on the other hand pressure was mounted by the middle class and some sections of business who were threatened by the movement they now sought to co-opt.

Mugabe was attacked by the masses, but he had also angered the global powers. The IMF and World Bank shunned the regime, arguing it had caved in too easily to “sectional interests”.

Mugabe realised that the regime had to move quickly, and government rhetoric began to lambast “Western racism”.

Land was key to this reorientation. The government sanctioned the occupation by war veterans of white-owned farms.

Before long Mugabe had outmanoeuvred the opposition in his party and won most of the regime behind his new “left wing” stance. He remarketed himself as a leader of the fight against imperialism and globalisation.

But his partial withdrawal from structural adjustment was a cynical move forced on him by popular resistance and working class struggles.

The reality for most Zimbabweans has been a continuation of the same ­policies while the regime mouths ­platitudes about “foreign powers”.

Privatisation continues and the cost of fuel and food rises, while land is redistributed mainly to a coterie of Mugabe’s cronies.

Over the past three years Gideon Gono, the Reserve Bank governor, has rolled out an unforgiving programme of neoliberal reforms that have slashed subsidies to the poor, while resuming debt repayments to the International Monetary Fund. Mugabe has given the governor his full support.

Millions face a daily struggle to survive, as unemployment has reached 80 percent.

Morgan Tsvangirai has repeatedly threatened to remove Mugabe by extra-parliamentary activity if he refuses to go legally. But the path to this action has been blocked by a combination of repression and economic crisis.

The regime has unleashed a wave of terror, which has helped to paralyse the MDC.

Militants

Madzewo Chimuka, general secretary of Zimbabwe’s Graphical Workers Union (ZGWU), explains, “Though we organised two national strikes in 2004, the environment was incredibly difficult. We had about 50 workers who were severely beaten by police.”?

The MDC remains the repository of hope for the majority of Zimbabweans, who see the party as the only way of ridding the country of Mugabe.

Behind the party is the support of a generation of working class militants, who formed the movement in 1999 and stand firmly with it.

Canwell Muchadya, president of the ZGWU, expresses the difficulties for

the opposition today. He said, “There is no rule of law and no jobs in Zimbabwe, so for the opposition to say to workers, ‘Come, let’s fight’ is very difficult because people will respond, ‘I will be beaten by the police and lose my job’.”?

Real improvements for Zimbabwe’s workers and peasants will not come from the authoritarian neoliberalism of Mugabe. Nor will they come from the policies of George Bush and Tony Blair, those false friends of freedom who claim to want democracy in Zimbabwe.

Mugabe can be removed by a coup in his own party, by pressure from the West, or by a movement from below.

The fight is to achieve that final option, where workers and peasants mobilise and shape the fall of Mugabe in a way that benefits the majority rather than the imperialist world order.

Leo Zeilig is the co-author of The Congo: Plunder and Resistance and Crisis in Zimbabwe, International Socialism Journal issue 94, Spring 2002. Both are available at Bookmarks, the socialist bookshop. Phone 020 7637 1848 or go to www. bookmarks.uk.com

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Who knew Mugabe had a Knighthood before it was revoked last week? The actuual foreign minister at the time of it's giving couldn't remember. I don't know whether that means they give out Honours like sweeties, or if they genuinely forget who is and isn't a Knight of the Realm and a Protector of the Crown.

What Mugabe has done to Zimbabwe would make a lot more sense if it really did track back to him being a servant of the British state all along. His economic policies, in particular, would start looking half-way reasonable if his sole aim was to eventually hand control of his country back to The West.

But I don't see it that way. He has done what he has done because he knew he could get away with it, and because he is a psycopathic nutcase (of the type that even Thatcher approved of). Prodigal sons return in ugly forms.

[geogeo]

Zimbabwe is part of a grand ol' empire scheme. Far worse is going on in countries with no sizable white minority in Africa, but the sheeple haven't heard of them and somehow think the worst of the worst is happening in Zimbabwe. Remember that many presidents of Africa, not to mention Nelson Mandela, were in the hire of MI-6--we're talking folks like Kenneth Kaunda, long-time president of Zambia, for example. Mugabe is part of the African strategy of tension, and always was. Did they mention how the international finance 'community' has been squeezing Zimbabwe for years? How it is they who hold all the cards? Mugabe is exactly the kind of psychopath who never forgets who his masters are, and will play the role to the hilt, to the end.

[chlamor]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y_Bmb3R ... re=related

[Username]

~
I've been trying to follow the news coverage on Zimbabwe for the last 20 years, because any black ruler who throws the white English settlers out on their asses, pretty much has my support.

The flood of stories, to start, mostly featured sad sad accounts of the poor white farmers who were being evicted from the land that had been in their families for generations. The land they so dearly loved, had worked so hard to develop into massive plantations, the land their fathers stole. (but they didn't mention that, of course.) Included in the report, videos of said farmer standing in his field, tear in his eye, overlooking the valley he once called home.

Then reports came in of droughts, mismanaged farms, starvation, violence and this bad, evil leader Mugabe, no one, no where had anything good to say about Mugabe.

And these days, since the latest "election" in Zimbabwe, the propaganda is so thick, you can cut it with a knife. To watch the brits and americans be aghast at the current fraud and atrocities going on in Zimbabwe, calling for sanctions, threatening other african nations with cuts in aid if they don't speak out about Mugabe (and amazingly, they still won't) (I'll find the link to that one later), to watch them be sooo extremely concerned about the state of affairs for the people of zimbabwe, is such a big goddamn LIE.

In defense, I guess the strongest argument in favor of Mugabe is the ol' "double-standard" argument of "well, if you care so much about zimbabwe, why do you turn a blind eye to the atrocities occuring here and here and here on the continent of africa?"

"Well, because Zimbabwe has to be made an example of." was a reply in defense to this hypocrisy, I heard stated in a C-span interview the other day.

On edit: the gentleman who made that statement was Patrick Merloe, National Democratic Institute, Electorate Programs Director

Patrick Merloe discusses what, if anything, the West should do to turn the Zimbabwe political situation around in the face of reports that President Robert Mugabe used widespread violence and intimidation tactics to keep opposition supporters away from the polls and win a sixth term. Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Now someone try to tell me that the white english settlers, the white banks, the white agricultural corporations, the white arms dealers, have nothing to do with the current state of affairs in Zimbabwe. Go ahead, try to tell me it isn't their fault as they try to squash the last bit of life-blood out of the nation of zimbabwe.

One thing is for sure...you can't believe anything coming out of the british and american media.
~

on edit: Sorry I said all that. I've got to get out of Africa.

[Username]

~

[url=http://www.ciranda.net/spip/article1185.html]Democracy in Africa is a lie
quinta-feira 22 de março de 2007
Mpofu Bhekimpilo [/url]

Both the so-called “democratized” states of the so-called “developed world” and the “democratizing” states of the so-called “developing world” have degraded and adulterated democracy to a sepulchral form that scarcely resembles the democratic ideal

Democracy in Africa is a lie. It is a smokescreen. It does not deliver what it promises. It veils a lot of hard and harsh realities in the name of justice, freedom and equality. These hard and harsh realities are legion. For example, in Africa there is deepening poverty. Social and economic inequalities divide the poor from the rich. Skewed incomes, lack of access to public services such as health, education, and credit facilities for entrepreneurship are an archetype of inequalities. These inequalities are symptomatic of a deeper political weakness which African democracy is ill-equipped to address. Yet the very values on which democracy, as a theory, is hinged abstract from the normative dimension that has the potential to address these issues.

It seems to be more convenient to spell out what democracy is not, or what infuriates its critics, sceptics, and cynics, i.e., what they perceive to be the malcontents of constitutional democracy - maybe just to get a taste or feel of it. Democracy is not the prerogative of the political elite, political party top cats, and the top brass of state bureaucracy. Democracy is not a gimmick, or an occasional privilege for citizens to secretly vote the elite and other opportunists into positions of power and influence in general elections which are intermittently scheduled, say, every four or five years. Democracy is not mob-rule, or the fascist or Nazi-like reign of intimidation, terror, oppression and domination of political minorities and other marginalized groupings by the political and, most often, the demographic and ethno-cultural/religious majority.

Supposedly, from this negative definition, an outline of the basic idea of democracy may be gleaned. Democracy should be a form of government in which every citizen has access to a publicly available space, and so he or she freely exercises his or her citizenship responsibility, or right, to contribute actively and to his or her fullest capacity to the decision-making process which is crucial and integral to the running of his or her community, province or region, and the state at large. No matter how sketchy, naïve, far-fetched, or strange, his or her opinion might sound to others; the opinion must be heard and responded to because it could contain a grain of truth, or it might have some sort of utility value. Every opinion should be allowed to flow into the “common pool of opinions”. It must be duly respected while it is being crucially and fairly tested openly in the “crucible of public reasonability”, namely, the deliberative arena. Democracy should be institutionalized or entrenched so that it penetrates people’s mundane lives; it should be a daily and localized affair at village, town, and city level. All communal decision-making procedures in any political milieu should reflect deliberative democratic modes of thinking. Democracy should give its platform or space to every voice, small or big, because it is the quality, and not the size, of voice that matters.

Therefore, democracy purports to make political discourse or communication possible in a multicultural, or multiracial, polity where citizens are members or followers of political parties or associations which are divided along tribal, religious, or ideological lines, or, in short, where diverse groupings of citizens do not share their comprehensive worldviews due to deep and historical differences in cultures, languages, religions, philosophies, moralities, or other comprehensive doctrines. The goal or ambition of democracy is to create and sustain a public space for communication for all culturally (etc) diverse groupings of citizens, so as to forge social and political cooperation and co-existence in such historically problematic and deeply divided polities.

Democracy is a popular government elected by the majority of the adult voter population of a particular country. Etiologically, democracy is derived from the Greek “demos-kratus”, which translates as the “people’s craft of ruling”. The people rule themselves by knowledgeably and freely consenting to be led and governed by some of their own. The people lend, as it were, their natural power to rule and govern to a body of representatives. This body of representatives-cum-leaders is as strong, or as weak, as the people who put it into power and positions of authority. The body of leaders derives its power and authority-legitimacy-from the common will of the people. The leaders are nothing more than mere representatives of the general, or common, will of the people as the electorate. In short, in democracy the people essentially rule and govern themselves. Presidents, prime ministers, chancellors, parliamentarians, senators, councilors, etc, are the people’s lieutenants. Needless to say, the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary, i.e. the three arms of government, lead and govern on behalf, and in the best interests, of the people who elect them into public office. In democracy the “rulers” are leaders and representatives of the people because in theory the people rule themselves. Those placed by the ballot into public office continue to take those national positions as long as the people want them to stay in those positions. Public office is performance-based, or meritorious. That’s why “recall” of representatives is not a privilege of constituents but their right. The leaders and representatives have the hopes, aspirations, and interests-needs— of the people at heart. Their personal ambitions are sacrificed for the sake of the needs of the people. Any contrary behavior on the part of a leader or a representative immediately evokes the people’s right to recall him or her, and hence to remove the leader or the representative from office— after all a public office is merely entrusted pro rata by the people to the officeholder. Abuse of office is tantamount to breach of the consent and the trust of the people.

Consequently, catchphrases like “decentralization”, “empowerment”, “participatory development”, which are desperate but futile attempts to close the gap between the theory of democracy and its hitherto bad practice, simply signify what has seriously gone wrong with democratic practice since the architects of the theory of democracy such as John Locke, Jean-Jacque Rousseau, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, among others, modernized the ancient Greek conception of democracy. These visionaries foresaw that Greek democracy could not be applied wholesale to the modern states principally because (1) it was suitable only for small city-states like Athens-which were more easily governable, and (2) it was exclusionist and male-dominated -foreigners, women, slaves, children or youth, did not have the right to vote and so they were barred from voting. In other words, democracy’s domain of rights and freedoms (its bill of rights) had to be continually widened and further articulated for the original conception of democracy to be more applicable to future, bigger, nation-states. In its modernized version, democracy thrives on the view that the people can only lead and govern if they have certain rights and freedoms. Slavery, feudalism, colonialism, racialism, imperialism, dictatorship or totalitarianism, majoritarianism or the marginalisation and suppression of minorities, among other ignoble and obnoxious systems of government, run counter to the democratic ideal or spirit because these systems are in clear violation of personal rights and freedoms. In these systems of undemocratic government, one dominant group brutally lords it over another servile group that fearfully and unwillingly obeys the dominant group. The ruler is to the ruled as is the master to his slaves. Brutality (of the rulers) and fear and blind or unquestioning loyalty (in the ruled) are the basic psycho-political tools that sustain undemocratic governments. Alas! In its degraded and adulterated form, democracy, as it is theorized and practiced today, is several removes from the democratic ideal, which its modern architects designed about two centuries ago. Both the so-called “democratized” states of the so-called “developed world” and the “democratizing” states of the so-called “developing world” have degraded and adulterated democracy to a sepulchral form that scarcely resembles the democratic ideal.

It is thus not mere literary logorrhea to term democracy an illusory smokescreen and an ignoble lie. The people feel both politically and economically powerless and disempowered. They sense a schism between politics and their economic needs. Solely driven by the survival interest due to extreme economic deprivation, the people of Africa cannot afford not to link politics to their personal physical survival. The ballot is first and foremost an economic promise made by the parliamentarian, or the president, aspirant to the people as voters. For the people, the ballot is their salvation-a culmination of otherwise dream-like hopes. This is evidenced by the now shattered grand hopes people held about multiparty politics around 1994 in both South Africa and Malawi. The people rightly thought with the introduction of multiparty politics paradise would abide in the two countries in the new political dispensation. Given their respective histories of Apartheid and autocracy, it was only natural for the voters in the two countries to equate political emancipation with personal economic redemption; or, political participation with personal economic development. However, political discourse at the time dwelt on civil and political rights mainly because of the totalitarian and oppressive nature of the previous regimes. It was thus unavoidable that political discourse at the time concentrated on personal rights and freedoms. Few democratic theorists saw the peoples’ emancipation or liberation in terms of economic rights as well.

Today, contemporary political discourse on democratic theory in Africa must bring to its fore the topic of economic rights, and not narrowly focus on civil and political rights and freedoms. Economic rights should be highlighted because political participation, say, through voting is an economic investment. A few years down the line, after general elections, the African voter begins to wonder whether that ballot is his or her lifeline or just a useless piece of paper, which is cheaper than toilet tissue that is ironically beyond the affordability range of most Africans. Will the elected representative whose photo appeared on the ballot live up to the economic promise of the vote? Therefore, as an ignoble lie, democracy in Africa has created the very instruments for both its stagnation or imprisonment and its eventual self-destruction. It creates a promise and then it breaks it dishonorably at its own peril. The conspicuous symptoms of this ignoble lie are voter apathy and growing public discontent with whatever the status quo stands for. Prevailing social and economic structures and modes of organization are lopsided and conveniently tipped towards the protection and promotion of the self-interests, fantasies and whims of the hegemony of sycophants and cadres of ruling parties. In a purportedly democratizing African nation-state, everything is structured and organized in favor of and for the overindulgent luxury of the sycophants and cadres of ruling parties, the haves. Their miraculous rise from rags to riches in one term of office (in four or five years) has been a feat achieved at the expense of, and by marginalizing and suppressing, political minorities, the have-nots.

Signs and symptoms of bad governance and bad democratic practice are too numerous to list. Curable but devastating diseases such as malaria, AIDS, tuberculosis, plague Africa’s health and medical sector. The agricultural systems are too inept to address the perennial problem of hunger and starvation, which leads to malnutrition (high infant morality rates) and lowering life expectancy. The agriculture sector is replete with inauthentic agricultural methods. These methods do not relate to, or mirror, African agricultural needs. The commercial farmer who has the capacity to produce food in large quantities does not grow food crops; instead he or she merely grows cash crops for foreign markets and his or her foreign investment. Neither the small-scale or communal farmer nor the large-scale or commercial farmer is helping to avert the worsening food crisis. African governments are too incompetent to contain rising crime (which breeds insecurity) especially in urbanized areas. High-level corruption and mismanagement of economies (e.g. skyrocketing inflation, balance of payments problems) are the order of the day in Africa. Top-level politicians and senior state bureaucrats try their best to cover it up. If they are implicated, they try their best to escape the hand of the law by manipulating the justice system. Domination, not reasoned argumentation and persuasion, of the minority voice is their gavel of power and authority. Might is right. Given this erudition of democracy as an ignoble lie, what is there to use as vignettes to illustrate this situation? The section gives a synopsis of two cases

The South African Case One classical example is the Khutsong saga on the border between Gauteng and North West, provinces. The constituents of Khutsong indicated to their councillors (representatives) that they did not want to be incorporated into the North West province. The concerned leaders and representatives itself turned a blind eye to their request. The reasons for refusing to be incorporated into the North West relates to the role of freedom as ‘constitutive of development’ of which, in this case, freedom is perceived as part of ‘well-being’. This, in the eyes of Amartya Sen enshrines the requisite rights of active political participation (at the local and high levels), in determining the shape of one’s social and economic environment. In the case at issue, ‘how was the democratic ideal violated so that democracy in Africa and in South Africa in particular, amounts to only an ignoble lie?

The case in Khutsong concerns the bread and butter issues of the constituent communities. These bread and butter issues are linked to ‘instrumental freedoms’ propounded by Sen, namely: political and economic freedoms. At political level, this includes the opportunities and possibility to scrutinize and criticize authorities and participatory selection of representatives or councillors. At the economic level, the freedoms have to do with the opportunities to enjoy utilising economic resources; and availability and access to these resources. In the saga at issue, all these were scathingly denied to the people of Khutsong. For instance, Khutsong people did not want to go to North West on economic grounds. They are better off in Gauteng than in North West because their economic ties are in Gauteng; hence the view that they could be worse off in the North West. Let alone, Gauteng is a rich province. Moreover, this has also to do with the social opportunities, in terms of accessing health care, education, and social security services. These were noble demands that should constitute a democratic ideal. Meanwhile, the only way these people could make sure their economic livelihood is not taken away from them was to contest the decision of their leaders and representatives through dialogue and ‘toyi-toying’. This right was also violated. The reader should bear in mind that democracy is not the prerogative of the political elite, political top cats, and the top brass of state bureaucracy. Given this purview, the reader should be reminded of the democratic ideal that purports: ‘all communal decision-making procedures in any political milieu should reflect deliberative democratic modes of thinking. Democracy should give its platform or space to every voice, small or big, because it is the quality....... of voice that matters’.

Another classical example that denote to the violation of the democratic ideal is the phenomenal prevalence of shacks (imijondolo) in almost all cities in South Africa. How is this so? The ballot is first and foremost an economic promise made by the parliamentarians or representatives of the people in government to people as voters. The shacks are a symbol of poverty. They are associated with less economic power and lower social status. The inhabitants of shacks lack basic services such as water, proper sanitation, healthcare facilities etc. in their poverty-stricken, they are not afforded the opportunities to enjoy and utilize economic resources; and availability and access to these resources. At political level, they have not been afforded the opportunities and possibility to scrutinize and criticize authorities and participatory selection of councillors. For example, one ‘informal’ interviewee argued that an organization called ‘Abahlali Basemjondolo’ (literally translated the dwellers from the shacks) argued that these people were refused to make their voices heard by the local government through ‘toyi-toyi’ or demonstration. These people simply wanted to make their voices heard about housing and the like. In this case the democratic ideal has been violated. Moreover, these people live in shear poverty. Surprisingly, though, everyone is told the economy has grown phenomenally (around 4 - 6 %). To worsen an even inflamed situation, according to the human development index (HDI) South Africa ranks number two in terms of income inequality, which is measured by the gin coefficient of 0.58. The gini coefficient measures the extent of inequality; and serves as the starkest indicator of the country’s unequal distribution of income. This situation of these people is well-captured in the discourse of Robert Chambers, that the poor find themselves in a deprivation trap of: poverty, isolation, powerlessness, vulnerability and deprivation itself. The presence of these nullifies the presence the democratic ideal as they can not coexist. Thus, where there is deprivation, there is no democracy.

The cases cited here are a pointer to the fact that, the economic factor in the lives of these people is ‘the measure’ of the extent of the embracement of the democratic ideal; which is an integral part of the modest proposal for an ‘African Progressive Democracy’. In the final analysis, the bleak picture that these two cases paint is indicative of the violation of the democratic ideal. In this context, democracy in South Africa is an ignoble lie which does not deliver what it promises. Nevertheless, in academic circles, discourses are never concluded. The subsequent articles will built upon this theme with more classical examples on the violation of the democratic ideal at issue; and eventually suggest a modest proposal of redress.

About the Author

Mr. Mpofu Bhekimpilo, BSoc.Sc, MSocSc (Fort Hare, South Africa), Training for Trainers in Conflict Transformation Certificate (Coalition for Peace in Africa), PhD Candidate - Centre for Higher Education Studies (UKZN) mpofub@ukzn.ac.za Tel: +27 31 260 3257 Cell: +27 812 1074
LINK
~

[Username]

~
There are only a couple more articles I wish to add to this thread and then I have to leave Africa.

We're going to Somalia now.

[url=http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3477.shtml]Bush’s rampage in Somalia: ‘They’re slaughtering Somalis like goats’
By Mike Whitney
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Jul 11, 2008[/url]

While George Bush was breezing through photo-ops at the G-8 summit in Japan. his Ethiopian proxy-army in Somalia was grinding out more carnage on the streets of Mogadishu. More than 40 civilians were killed in 48 hours.

On Sunday, Osman Ali Ahmed, the head of the UN Development Program in Somalia, was shot gangland style as he left a mosque after prayers. He died before reaching the hospital with wounds to the head and chest. Ali Ahmed is just the latest of the peace-keepers who have been killed in the ongoing battle between Bush’s Ethiopian occupiers and the Somali guerrillas.

US foreign policy in Somalia has resulted in disaster. Millions of Somalis have been forced to flee their homes and relocate to tent cities in the south to escape the fighting. The latest surge in violence has been the worst in a decade and the security situation continues to deteriorate despite the arrival of 2,600 troops from the African Union and a tentative truce that was signed in June between some of the warring factions.

The Western media has stubbornly refused to report on the rising death-toll in Somalia, choosing instead to focus all of their attention on America’s “villain du jour,” Robert Mugabe. Mugabe appears to be next on the neocon’s list for regime change. (Paul Wolfowitz even composed a postmortem for Zimbabwe’s president in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial “How to Put the Heat on Mugabe”)

In 2006, the United States supported an alliance of Somali warlords known as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) who established a base of operations in the western city of Baidoa. With the help of the US-backed Ethiopian army, western mercenaries, US Navy warships, and AC-130 gunships; the TFG was able capture Mogadishu and force the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and their allies to retreat to the south. But, much like Iraq and Afghanistan, the resistance has coalesced into a tenacious guerrilla army which has returned to the capital and resumed the fight making it impossible for their Ethiopian adversaries to govern.

As the struggle continues, the humanitarian situation has gone from bad to worse. At least 2.6 million Somalis are now facing famine due to acute food shortages spurred by a prolonged drought, violence and high inflation. UN monitors have warned that the figure could hit exceed 3.5 million by the end of 2008. The UN Security Council has helped facilitate the violence by failing to condemn US support for Ethiopia’s invasion and by promising to send peacekeepers to mop up after fighting ends. They’ve shown no interest in stopping the bloodshed or threatening sanctions against the aggressors. The UNSC has become little more than an accomplice in Bush’s rampages.

In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, Salim Lone, a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya and a former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq explains the UN’s role in providing the “go ahead” for the US invasion: “The lawlessness of this particular war is astounding; the most lawless war of our generation. You know, all aggressive wars are illegal. But in this particular one, there have been violations of the UN Charter and gross violations of international human rights. But, in addition, there have been very concrete violations by the United States of two Security Council resolutions. The first one was the arms embargo imposed on Somalia, which the United States has been routinely flaunting for many years now. But then the US decided that that resolution was no longer useful, and they pushed through an appalling resolution in December, which basically gave the green light to Ethiopia to invade. They pushed through a resolution which said that the situation in Somalia was a threat to international peace and security, at a time when every independent report indicated, and Chatham House’s report on Wednesday also indicated, that the Islamic Courts Union had brought a high level of peace and stability that Somalia had not enjoyed in sixteen years. So here was the UN Security Council going along with the American demand to pass a blatantly falsified UN resolution. And that resolution actually was a violation (of the) the UN Charter. You know, the UN Charter is like the American Constitution and the Security Council is not allowed to pass laws or rules that violate the Charter. And yet, who is going to correct them?” (Democracy Now)

The Bush administration has predictably invoked the “terrorist” hobgoblin to justify its involvement in Somalia, but no one is buying it. The ICU is not an Al Qaida affiliate or a terrorist organization despite the absurd claims of the State Department. It is true that the ICU was trying to enforce Sharia Law, but a much milder form of Sharia than America’s ally, Saudi Arabia.

The ICU was the first government in over a decade to restore security and order to Somalia and--generally speaking--the people were supportive of the new regime. Political analyst James Petras summed it up like this: “The ICU was a relatively honest administration, which ended warlord corruption and extortion. Personal safety and property were protected, ending arbitrary seizures and kidnappings by warlords and their armed thugs. The ICU is a broad multi-tendency movement that includes moderates and radical Islamists, civilian politicians and armed fighters, liberals and populists, electoralists and authoritarians. Most important, the Courts succeeded in unifying the country and creating some semblance of nationhood, overcoming clan fragmentation.”

The real motives behind the invasion were oil and geopolitics. According to most estimates 30 per cent of America’s oil will come from Africa in the next ten years. Bush’s new warlord-friends in the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) have already indicated that they are ready to pass a new oil law that will encourage foreign oil companies to return to Somalia. The same oil giants that are now lining up in Iraq will soon be making their way to Somalia as well.

The Horn of Africa is also critical for its deep-water ports and its strategic location for future military bases. It’s all part of the Grand Scheme for reconfiguring the region to accommodate America’s hegemonic ambitions.

Humanitarian catastrophe: “The Ethiopian invasion has destroyed all the life-sustaining systems”

Heavy fighting and artillery fire have reduced large parts of Mogadishu to rubble. More than 700,000 people have been forced to leave the capital with nothing more than what they can carry on their backs. Entire districts have been evacuated and turned into ghost towns. The main hospital has been bombed and is no longer taking patients. Ethiopian snipers are perched atop rooftops across the city. Over 3.5 million people are now huddled in the south in tent cities without sufficient food, clean water or medical supplies. It is the greatest humanitarian crisis in Africa today; a man-made Hell entirely conjured up in Washington.

Just weeks ago, Amnesty International reported that it had heard many accounts that Ethiopian troops were “slaughtering (Somalis) like goats.” In one case, “a young child’s throat was slit by Ethiopian soldiers in front of the child’s mother.”

In another Democracy Now interview, Abdi Samatar, professor of Global Studies at the University of Minnesota, had this to say: “The Ethiopian invasion, which was sanctioned by the US government, has destroyed virtually all the life-sustaining economic systems which the population have built without the government for the last fifteen years. And the militia that are supposed to protect the population have been looting shops. For instance, the Bakara market, which is the largest market in Mogadishu, has been looted repeatedly by the militias of the so-called Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, supported by Ethiopian troops. And the new prime minister of Somalia, Mr. Hassan Nur Hussein, has himself announced in the BBC that it was his militias that—who have looted this place. So what you have is a population that’s hit from both sides--on one side, by the militias of the so-called Transitional Federal Government, which is recognized by the United States, and on the other side, by the Ethiopian invaders who seem to be bent on ensuring that they break the will of the people to resist as free people in their own country. . . . What you have is really terror in the worst sense of the word, a million people have been displaced that the Ethiopians have been denying humanitarian aid, and the United States which seems to just watch and let it happen.

“It’s like there’s has been a calculated decision made somewhere in the world, maybe in Washington, maybe in Addis Ababa, maybe in Mogadishu itself, to starve these people until they submit themselves to the whims of the American military and the Ethiopians, who are acting on their behalf.”

Amnesty International has called for an investigation of the United States role in Somalia.

Regrettably, neither the United Nations nor the establishment media are at all interested in Bush’s war crimes in Africa. All they care about is Mugabe.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal

End


[url=http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43825&hd=&size=1&l=e]Willing Executioners: America's Bipartisan Atrocity Deepens in Somalia
Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque

May 7, 2008

Do you want to know what the entire American political establishment -- Democrat and Republican, conservative and "progressive" -- really stands for? Do you want to know what they all support, whole-heartedly, without the slightest objection or demur? Do you want to see their true vision for the world, behind all the pious rhetoric and poisonous lies? Then look no further; here it is, in the raw:

continued at link.[/url]
~

[Jeff]

I think this story in today's LA Times has some fascinating observations on the seduction of power and the cowardice of brutes.


Fearsome Zimbabwe militias are afraid

HARARE, ZIMBABWE -- When Robert Mugabe's "green bombers" walk the streets, they know that everyone else is afraid of them. But what everyone else doesn't realize is that the green bombers are frightened of them too.

The youth militias are so notorious here that they can seem like cartoon bad guys -- one-dimensional and evil. But the ordinary face of evil is much more human, and more menacing.

Two of the young men, who had spent months beating, looting, raping and killing people in their neighborhood near Harare, sat recently with anxious eyes and furrowed brows. They looked so non-threatening that it was difficult to picture them beating up a 12-year-old just for wearing red, or helping to burn a house where people died in the flames in the months before the June 27 presidential runoff. They behaved like guilty boys, defensive about their "chores."

"I did not feel like fighting my brother," said one of the men, a 25-year-old who spoke on condition of anonymity, refusing to be identified even by a first name. "We were forced to do these chores."

The level of violence "just depended on your mood that day, or that hour," he said.

The interview was conducted in a moving car because the two men were afraid of violent reprisals for talking to a Western journalist. As the car passed along drab suburban streets where children played and women walked to the market, the men's soft, sheepish murmurs produced a disconcerting tug of sympathy.

Like his victims, the 25-year-old lives with fear. He believes the spirits of those he killed will come and take vengeance. He is afraid to walk alone in his neighborhood, because an angry mob might rise up and kill him for what he has done in Mugabe's name.

And he's afraid of his superiors.

"If you don't do it, they can just tell you, 'You are a spy;' they can start beating you, or kill you."

He's remorseful, up to a point; but mostly he blames his commanders. He was only "following orders."

"When we first got to the base we were told the rules and orders, which you can't resist," he said. "If the commander tells you what to do, you have to do what he says."

The youth militias were the storm troopers in the regime's military-style campaign to kill and disperse the opposition, and to force people to vote for Mugabe in the runoff. Hundreds of bases were set up before the balloting, but most of them have closed down.

The opposition says the violence continues, but at a lower level, and the fear remains.

Mugabe is under intense international pressure to stop the violence, with talks underway in South Africa aimed at a political resolution. But if the international focus on the political situation wanes and Mugabe wants to punish or destroy the opposition, violence could flare again.

For weeks after the runoff, the 25-year-old was afraid to break away from the militia base where he spent most of his time, fearing that he would be attacked. But he recently summoned the nerve and fled.

He looked neat and well dressed, with a spotless T-shirt and a baseball cap. He seemed thoughtful, but deeply troubled. He spoke quietly and hesitantly, especially when admitting his most serious crimes, such as raping and killing.

"We were beating people and leaving them for dead," he said.

His friend Martin, 28, a member of the same militia, was dressed to look cool in his oversized baseball cap, sweat shirt and jeans. He also wore a big cross around his neck.

Martin, too, recently summoned the courage to leave the camp, but is terrified that he'll face revenge.

"I'm feeling a little insecure because I now suspect that I can be attacked by some of the ones we are attacking," he said.

His face was boyish, his eyes jumping nervously. Occasionally, at a difficult question, he giggled awkwardly. He let his friend do most of the talking, sometimes adding a few words, explaining how the militias would beat anyone in the streets who wore red, even young girls. The reason: It might symbolize a red card for Mugabe (a sports term for sending a player off the field). He described beating an old man and breaking his limbs.

The two went through a youth training camp, run by the ruling ZANU-PF political party, for three months in 2002. That's where they got their green bombers nickname: The trainees wear green berets.

Most people enter the camps hoping for jobs and opportunities, several said. What they get is political brainwashing in support of "unity" and a one-party state, and against the West and opposition "sell-outs."

The two said they were raised to believe that ZANU-PF was best for Zimbabwe.

"At first, we believed in ZANU-PF because we thought maybe it's good for the country, but we realized that we end up fighting our brothers and sisters," Martin said at the beginning of the interview. Later, the two expressed more disillusionment over the fact that they never got paid.

When he started attending ZANU-PF meetings in 2002, Martin began to live with fear.

"I became afraid for the family and my life too. It was impossible for me not to attend the meetings," he said.

In the recent campaign of state-sponsored violence, the two men spent much of their time drunk and stoned on marijuana.

They would descend on bars in their neighborhood outside Harare, the capital, taking money and whatever they wanted to drink and beating patrons. They always carried gasoline bombs on raids and sometimes burned houses.

They beat people with sticks, fan belts and barbed wire.

"Every day we would bring people back to the base -- anyone who could not chant the [ZANU-PF] slogans and anyone who was wearing red clothes. We would be drunk and we would enjoy it," the 25-year-old said, referring to the beatings. "We just could end up beating people because we were drunk."

The two men acknowledged that they had raped some of the 20 girls forced to live at the base, victims who "feared for their lives. They had no choice. They were not going anywhere," the 25-year-old said. Of the rapes, he said, "At that time maybe we'd be drunk so we'd just enjoy every moment."

When it came to discussing killings, the conversation was punctuated with pauses and half-spoken sentences. The 25-year-old insisted that he was unsure how many people had died from the beatings.

"Most of the time you will leave them almost dead. You just leave them in agony," he said.

When the youth militias walked the streets, or diverted traffic, or set up roadblocks, nearly everyone they met was afraid to stand up to them. But the 25-year-old said that power didn't feel good.

"Ah, no," he said. "You must not walk alone when everyone is afraid of you. They could form a gang and murder you. They don't realize that you are being ordered and you can't resist.

"The problem is, under African culture, the spirits of the dead will come and avenge their deaths."

When he joined the youth militias, it was an adventure.

"At first we thought it was exciting. I thought I could get something from ZANU-PF to sustain my family, but it was to no avail," he said. "These days we feel like we're prisoners."

[Username]

~
[url=http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9707]Mugabe’s Biggest Sin
Anglo-American and Chinese interests clash over Zimbabwe’s strategic mineral wealth
by F. William Engdahl
Global Research, July 30, 2008 [/url]

Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, presides over one of the world’s richest minerals treasures, the Great Dyke region, which cuts a geological swath across the entire land from northeast to southwest. The real background to the pious concerns of the Bush Administration for human rights in Zimbabwe in the past several years is not Mugabe’s possible election fraud or his expropriation of white settler farms. It is the fact that Mr. Mugabe has been quietly doing business, a lot of it, with the one country which has virtually unlimited need of strategic raw materials Zimbabwe can provide—China. Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is, along with Sudan, on the central stage of the new war over control of strategic minerals of Africa between Washington and Beijing, with Moscow playing a supporting role in the drama. The stakes are huge.

Zimbabwe’s President, Robert Mugabe is a very very bad man. This we all know from reading the newspapers or hearing the pronouncements of George W. Bush, earlier Britain’s Tony Blair and more recently Gordon Brown. In their eyes he has sinned badly. They charge that he is a dictator; that he has expropriated, often with violence, the farms of whites as part of land reform; they claim he rigged his re-election by vote fraud and violence; that he has ruined the economy of Zimbabwe.

Whether Robert Mugabe deserves to be in Washington’s honor roll of villains alongside Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, Milosevic, Ahmadinejad, and Adolf Hitler, however, it is not the reason Washington and London have made Zimbabwe regime change priority number one for their Africa policy.

What his sin is seems to have more to do with his attempts to get out from under Anglo-American neo-colonial serfdom dependency and to pursue a national economic development independent of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. His real sin seems to be the fact that he has turned to the one nation that offers his government credits and soft loans for economic development with no strings attached—The Peoples’ Republic of China.

Western media accounts conveniently tend to omit the second major party to what is a huge tug of war between Anglo-American interests and China to get control of Zimbabwe’s vast mineral wealth. We should keep in mind that for Washington there are always "good dictators" and "bad dictators." The difference is whether the given dictator serves US national interests or not. Mugabe clearly is in the latter category.

Cecil Rhodes’ legacy

Zimbabwe is the name of what under the era of British Imperialism a century ago was named Rhodesia. The name Rhodesia came from the British imperial strategist and miner, Cecil Rhodes, founder of the Rhodes scholarships to Oxford, and author of a plan for a vast private African zone, to be chartered from the Queen of England, from Egypt to South Africa. Cecil Rhodes created the British South Africa Company, modeled on the East India Company, along with his partner, L. Starr Jameson of Jameson Raid notoriety, to exploit the mineral riches of Rhodesia. It controlled what was later named Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Southern Rhodesia-Nyasaland. The model was that the British Government would assume all risks to militarily defend Rhodes’ looting while Rhodes and his London bankers, above all Lord Rothschild, who was a close associate, would assume all the gains of the business.

Rhodes, a seasoned geologist, knew well that there was a remarkable geological fault running from the mouth of the Nile at the Gulf of Suez south through Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, down through today’s Zimbabwe on to South Africa. Rhodes had already instigated several wars to gain control of the diamonds of Kimberly and the gold of Witwatersrand in South Africa. This geological phenomenon he, as well as enterprising German explorers, had discovered in the 1880’s. They named it the Great Rift Valley.

Rhodesia, like South Africa after the bloody Boer wars, was settled by white settlers to secure future minerals gains for allied interests of the City of London, mainly those of the powerful Oppenheimer family and their gold and diamond enterprises in the region.

In 1962 when Africa was undergoing the wave of national liberation from colonial rule, a wave calculatedly supported by "non-colonial power" Washington, Rhodesia was one of the last bastions, along with former British colony South Africa, of white Apartheid rule. Whites in Rhodesia constituted only 1-2% of the total population so their methods of holding on to power were rather ruthless.

White supremacist Prime Minister, Ian Smith, declared Rhodesian independence from Britain in 1965 rather than agree to the slightest compromise on race or power sharing with black nationalists. Britain got UN trade sanctions imposed to force Smith to buckle under. Despite sanctions, there was considerable support from conservative business interests in London. Britain’s Tiny Rowland, head of the Lonrho mining conglomerate, secured the bulk of his African profits from Rhodesian copper mining and related ventures under the Smith regime. The City of London knew very well what riches lay in Rhodesia. The question was how to secure enduring control. Smith’s Rhodesian backers had little interest in giving it all to London.

Following a long and bloody struggle, in 1980 the leader of the black African Popular Front coalition, Robert Mugabe, overwhelmingly won election as the first Prime Minister of a new Zimbabwe. Twenty eight years later, the same Robert Mugabe is under escalating attack from the West, especially Zimbabwe’s former colonial master, England, including strong economic sanctions designed to bring the country to the brink of collapse, to force him to open the economy to foreign (read Anglo-American and allied) investment. Ironically, the issue seems not all that different from the Ian Smith era: London and US control of the resources of the rich land, and Zimbabwean efforts to resist that control.

The Great Dyke

Within Zimbabwe, a portion of the rich Great Rift is called the Great Dyke, an intrusive geological treasure zone running over 530 kilometers from the northeast to the southwest of the country, in places up to 12 kilometers wide. A river runs along the fault and the region is volcanically active. Here also lie vast deposits of chromium, of copper, platinum and other metals.

The US State Department, as well as London, is aware of the vast minerals and other riches of Zimbabwe. It states in a recent report on Zimbabwe,

"Zimbabwe is endowed with rich mineral resources. Exports of gold, asbestos, chrome, coal, platinum, nickel, and copper could lead to an economic recovery one day...The country is richly endowed with coal-bed methane gas that has yet to be exploited.

With international attractions such as Victoria Falls, the Great Zimbabwe stone ruins, Lake Kariba, and extensive wildlife, tourism historically has been a significant segment of the economy and contributor of foreign exchange. The sector has contracted sharply since 1999, however, due to the country's declining international image.(sic).

Energy Resources

With considerable hydroelectric power potential and plentiful coal deposits for thermal power station, Zimbabwe is less dependent on oil as an energy source than most other comparably industrialized countries, but it still imports 40% of its electric power needs from surrounding countries--primarily Mozambique. Only about 15% of Zimbabwe's total energy consumption is accounted for by oil, all of which is imported. Zimbabwe imports about 1.2 billion liters of oil per year. Zimbabwe also has substantial coal reserves that are utilized for power generation, and coal-bed methane deposits recently discovered in Matabeleland province are greater than any known natural gas field in Southern or Eastern Africa. In recent years, poor economic management and low foreign currency reserves have led to serious fuel shortages."

In short, chrome, copper, gold, platinum, huge hydroelectric power potential and vast coal reserves are what is at stake for Washington and London in Zimbabwe. The country also has unverified reserves of uranium, something in big demand today for nuclear power generation.

It is clear of late that so long as the tenacious Mugabe is running things, not the Anglo-Americans, but rather the Chinese, are Zimbabwe’s preferred business partners. This seems to be Mugabe’s greatest sin. He’s not reading from the right program as George W. Bush’s friends see it. His real sin seems to be turning East not West for economic and investment help.

The Chinese connection

During the Cold War China recognized and supported Robert Mugabe. In recent years as China’s search for secure raw materials escalated its foreign diplomacy, relations have become stronger. According to the Chinese media, China has invested more in Zimbabwe than any other nation.

Already back in July 2005 as Tony Blair turned the sanctions screws tighter on Zimbabwe, Mugabe flew to Beijing to meet with the top Chinese leadership, where he reportedly sought an emergency loan of US$1 billion and asked increased Chinese involvement in the economy.

It began to bear fruit. In June 2006 state--owned Zimbabwean businesses signed a number of energy, mining and farming deals worth billions of dollars with Chinese companies. The largest was with China Machine-Building International Corporation, for a $1,3bn contract to mine coal and build thermal-power generators in Zimbabwe, to reduce Zimbabwe’s electricity shortage. The Chinese company had already built thermal-power stations in Nigeria and Sudan, and had been involved in mining projects in Gabon.

In 2007 the Chinese government donated farm machinery worth $25 million to Zimbabwe, including 424 tractors and 50 trucks, as part of a $58 million loan to the Zimbabwean government. The Mugabe administration had previously seized white-owned farms and gave them to blacks, damaging machinery in the process. In return for the equipment and the loan the Zimbabwean government will ship 30 million kilograms of tobacco to the People's Republic of China.

Other Zimbabwe-China agreements included a deal between the Zimbabwe Mining Development and China’s Star Communications, forming a joint venture to mine chrome, with funding from the China Development Bank. Zimbabwe also agreed to import road-building, irrigation and farming equipment from the China National Construction and Agricultural Machinery Import and Export Corporation and China Poly Group. Zimbabwe also relies on China for imports of telecommunications equipment, military hardware and many other critical items it can no longer import from the west because of the British-led sanctions.

Relations have become so important that Zimbabwe’s police have a dedicated "China desk" to protect Chinese interests in the country.

In April 2007 the chairman of China’s top political advisory body, Jia Qinglin, head of the National Committee of the Chinese Peoples’ Political Consultative Conference, flew to Harare to meet with Mugabe. It was a follow-up to the 2006 Beijing China-Africa Cooperation Summit where the Chinese government invited the heads of more than 40 African states to discuss relations. Africa has become a diplomatic and economic priority for China and its economy.

At that time, Beijing got an open invitation to help develop dormant mines in the country. The deputy speaker of Zimbabwe's parliament called for more Chinese investment in the country's mining sector, according to China's Xinhua news agency. Zimbabwe's mining laws were changed to allow the government to reallocate mining claims that were not being exploited.

Mining generates half of Zimbabwe's export revenue. It is the only sector in the country that still has foreign investors after the collapse of the main agricultural sector. Western companies with mining claims in Zimbabwe were not exploiting them. "We would appeal to the Chinese government to come in full force to exploit these minerals," Zimbabwean Deputy Parliamentary Speaker, Kumbirai Kangai said to the official Xinhua.

Kangai assured potential Chinese investors that they would not expose themselves to legal action if they took over claims held by Western companies.

A few months after, in December 2007, Chinese company, Sinosteel Corporation, acquired 67 percent stake in Zimbabwe's leading ferrochrome producer and exporter Zimasco Holdings. Zimasco Holdings is the fifth largest high carbonated ferrochrome producer in the world. It used to produce 210,000 tons of high-carbon ferrochrome per year, nearly all of it along the mineral-rich Great Dyke, accounting for 4 percent of global ferrochrome production.

Zimasco has also the world's second largest reserves of chrome, after South Africa. It was formerly owned by Union Carbide Corporation, now part of Dow Chemicals Corp.

Oh, oh! Alarm bells went ringing in London and in Washington at that news.

China clearly views Africa as a central part of its strategic plan, most notably for its oil reserves and vital raw materials such as copper, chrome, nickel. The continent is also at the same time becoming an important region for Chinese manufactured exports. But the raw materials battle is at the heart, and the real reason by all accounts, why Washington recently decided to form a separate Africa Command in the Pentagon.

Controlling China’s economic emergence is an un-stated strategic priority of United States foreign and military policy and has been since before September 11, 2001. The only delicate point in the business is the fact that China, with well over $1.7 trillions of foreign exchange reserves, most believed in form of US Treasury securities, could trigger a complete dollar panic and further collapse of the US economy should she decide for political reasons it were too risky to continue holding its hundreds of billions of US dollar debt. In effect, by buying US Government debt with its trade surpluses, China has been indirectly financing US policies counter to Chinese national interest such as the Iraq war, or even the $100 million or so annually that Condi Rice’s State Department spends on Tibet.

China is refusing to play by the rules of the Anglo-American neo-colonial game. It does not seek IMF or World Bank approval before dealing with African countries. It makes soft loans, regardless who might be running the country. In this it does nothing different from Washington or London. The Chinese see American influence in Africa less entrenched than in the rest of the world, thus offering unique opportunities for China to pursue its economic interests.

It may or may not be cynical. It may be Realpolitik. If it results in the ability of certain African countries to use China as a political counterweight to the one-sided Anglo-American domination of the Continent, that itself could be a major benefit to Africans depending on how they use it.

Clearly, it has been extremely positive for Chinese access to vital economic minerals for its economy as well as oil from places such as Darfur and southern Sudan, or Nigeria.

Mineral wealth has once more put Africa on center stage of a battle for mineral riches between East and West. This time, unlike during the Cold War era, however, Beijing is playing with far more assets, and Washington with far less.

F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (Pluto Press), and Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (www.globalresearch.ca). He may be contacted through his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net .
© Copyright F. William Engdahl, Global Research, 2008

Global Research
~

[stefano]

Some action in Zim this past week. Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa was in London last week, may have promised reforms (opportunities for British capital) in return for loans if he's part of a new government, I suspect. If Mugabe goes then Emmerson Mnanagwa will probably take over, but I can't see him winning the 2018 election.

Fed up and not afraid!
July 12, 2016 by Jacquelin Kataneksza

Following weeks of public demonstrations against corruption, bad governance and a rapidly deteriorating economy, people all across Zimbabwe heeded a call last week for a nationwide stay-away, in an act of defiance against the government.

In recent weeks, protests both within and outside the country have increased in both number and intensity. On Friday July 1, the Zimbabwe-South Africa border post, Beitbridge, was shut down and a Zimbabwe Revenue Authority warehouse set on fire, after citizens took to the streets to protest a government ban on the importation of basic goods.

On Monday July 4, public transportation drivers in Harare clashed violently with police during riots over police harassment and extortion on the roads, while in London, UK activists besieged Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa. The following day, teachers, doctors and nurses in Zimbabwe began nationwide strikes over the government’s failure to pay their salaries on time.

More at the link, with links.

Zimbabwe pastor due in court as strike falters

AFP Wired World 13 Jul 2016 01:37 (South Africa)

by Reagan MASHAVAVE

Supporters of Zimbabwe protest leader Evan Mawarire rallied Wednesday outside the court where he was set to appear after being arrested during a surge of unrest against President Robert Mugabe's government.

Mawarire, a pastor who has been charged with inciting public violence, was an organiser of a one-day nationwide shutdown last week when offices, shops, schools and some government departments stayed closed.

Protest organisers had appealed for Zimbabweans to hold another strike starting on Wednesday, but their calls were largely unsuccessful with businesses and schools open as usual.

Police were on patrol in the capital Harare after Mawarire, who founded the internet ThisFlag protest movement, was arrested on Tuesday.

A series of demonstrations in Zimbabwe, where protests are rare under Mugabe's authoritarian rule, have been driven by an economic crisis that left banks short of cash and the government struggling to pay its workers.

"They made sure that they arrested the people who are most vocal and fearless -- that is why the response is not as good as it was last week," Onias Marongwa, who works in a grocery store, told AFP.

More than 150 mainly young supporters, many carrying the Zimbabwean flag that has become a symbol of the protests, sang and chanted outside the magistrate's court in Harare.

Mawarire was brought into court through a back entrance, as scores of lawyers from the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights group offered to represent him.

"The arrest of Pastor Evan Mawarire appears to be a well-calculated plan to intimidate him and other activists ahead of the national shutdown," Muleya Mwananyanda of Amnesty International said in a statement.

"Instead of suppressing dissenting voices, Zimbabwean authorities should be listening to protesters."

Amnesty said about 300 people had been arrested for participating in protests around the country since they started last week.

The recent demonstrations have revealed long-bubbling frustration in a country where 90 percent of the population are not in formal employment.

Mugabe, 92, has overseen years of economic decline, repression of dissent, allegedly rigged elections and mass emigration since he came to power in 1980.

Last week security forces used tear gas and water cannon to disperse violent protests outside Harare that erupted over police officers allegedly using road blocks to extort cash from motorists.

Television footage showed police beating protesters with sticks.

Other protests have erupted at the border with South Africa over a ban on imports such as canned vegetables, powdered milk and cooking oil.

On Tuesday, Home Affairs Minister Ignatius Chombo held a press conference to warn that anyone who took part in the planned two-day strike would face "the full wrath of the law".

"I urge members of the public to desist from engaging in illegal protests," he said.

Many civil servants have been paid their delayed June salaries since last week.

In the southeastern town of Masvingo, most shops and offices were open despite the planned strike.

"The regime's machinery is very visible," Takafira Zhou, leader of the Progressive Teachers' Union in the town, told AFP.

"Today's response to the strike is low as some people who took part last week had their salaries forfeited and they fear for the worst if they are seen to be defiant."

[stefano]

Good stuff, though I have no doubt there's some co-ordination with NED types. Good move getting a pastor to front it - a student wouldn't have walked yesterday.

Zimbabwe: Power to the pastor, power to the people as Mawarire walks

Simon Allison 14 Jul 2016 01:29 (South Africa)

The Zimbabwean regime did not expect Pastor Evan Mawarire to be set free on Wednesday night. But unprecedented public pressure forced the magistrate’s hand, with a little help from blundering police. Look away now, Comrade Bob, because Zimbabwe will never be the same again. By SIMON ALLISON.

Harare Magistrate’s Court may once have been an impressive building, but no longer. The walls are cracked. The paint is peeling. The windows of Court Six, where Pastor Evan Mawarire’s remand hearing was held on Wednesday, are caked with dirt. Only half the ceiling lights work, and the wall clock is stuck at a little after seven o’clock.

As a symbol for everything that’s wrong with Zimbabwe, it’s a writer’s dream, as is the court’s location on the inauspiciously named Rotten Row.

Except that something unexpected happened. The usual show trial script called for Mawarire’s charges to be upheld, and bail denied, to make sure that the state keeps him where they like to keep the troublemakers: behind bars.

But no one followed the script. On Wednesday, rising above the symbolism of these shabby surroundings, something went right in Zimbabwe.

The first to break ranks were the lawyers, nearly 200 of them, who volunteered to represent Mawarire en masse. Not all of them could fit into the jam-packed courtroom – strictly standing room only – but those who did were conspicuous in their sharp suits and business attire.

They became even more conspicuous when Magistrate Vakayi Chikwekwe asked who was representing the accused. As one, the lawyers in the room raised their Law Society cards, an extraordinary image of solidarity that gave goose bumps to everyone else watching – except, perhaps, the none-too-undercover intelligence operatives, who appeared to be carefully noting down faces and names. That the lawyers present were undeterred by this danger underscores their bravery.

“There are times when we have to shed our status as lawyers and push for justice as citizens. It does not require a lawyer to see that there is injustice going on here,” said Belvin Bopato, an attorney.

The hundreds, and at times thousands, of people gathered outside were doing something equally unprecedented. They were protesting. In Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, protesting is a dangerous, even fatal, activity. Which is why it doesn’t happen very often, and never in these numbers. But here they were on Wednesday, draped in the national flag which has become such a subversive symbol of resistance, chanting and singing and praying all through the day and early evening as they waited for the magistrate to deliver his verdict.


Photo: The hundreds, and at times thousands, of people gathered outside the court in Harare on Wednesday (Simon Allison)

“It’s been a while since Zimbabwe last had a voice, but now it has found a voice. I’m here to stand in solidarity with Pastor Evan,” said activist Mlambo Garikai.

The most unexpected plot twist, however, was delivered courtesy of Magistrate Chikwekwe himself. It was possible to feel some sympathy for the magistrate, who found himself in a classic Catch-22: flout the law but keep his political bosses happy; or follow the law but anger his superiors, who have the power to make him very uncomfortable indeed.

It was obviously a difficult decision. Even after starting proceedings six hours late, Chikwekwe called several long adjournments, and only delivered his verdict full 90 minutes after it was due.

As they waited, the audience inside the courtroom sang and danced, while the large crowd outside began to get impatient. Had Mawarire not been released, a confrontation between riot police and protesters would probably have been unavoidable.

But the law won. After lecturing the police and prosecutors about their mistakes – most notably in substituting the original charges with a much more serious treason charge just minutes before the hearing began – Chikwekwe told Mawarire he was free to go.

The courtroom erupted into cheers and ululations, as did the thousands of people waiting outside, who by now were holding candles. “I feel ecstatic. We have shown that if we can come together we can push the system to work normally. What happened here today gives us hope,” said Elton Kapfunde, one of the pastor’s many supporters.

Ngonidzashe Marera, a friend of Mawarire’s, said that the verdict showed the strength of the pastor’s faith. “I’m over the moon. God is there for us. Good has prevailed. Man’s arms are too short to box with God, clearly.”

If Robert Mugabe’s regime falls – and that day is considerably closer today than it was yesterday – then historians will look back and pinpoint this as the moment when the tide began to turn. There’s no doubt that the sheer scale of the solidarity movement frightened the ruling party’s decision-makers, who never intended to let Mawarire walk, and may even have forced Magistrate Chikwekwe’s hand.

On Wednesday, Zimbabweans in their thousands took on the regime, and won. And now that they’ve done it once, they can and will do it again.

[stefano]

Just saw these:

Pastor: 'Zimbabweans must no longer be afraid' (short video of Mawarire)

Zimbabwe pastor Evan Mawarire calls for more protests

A Zimbabwean pastor who was briefly detained after organising a nationwide strike last week has called on people to keep protesting.

Evan Mawarire told the BBC people should stay at home as part of a campaign against corruption, economic mismanagement and unemployment.
...
"And our protest - non-violent, non-inciting, stay-at-home, is the best because it is within the confines of the law.