THE brazen attempt by the head of the SADC Observer Mission (SOEM), Nevers Mumba, to tarnish Zimbabwe’s August 23 harmonised elections and the bizarre call for donations by former US President Barack Obama to flood hit Libya, a country whose destruction he led, are once again compelling reasons for liberation movements in Africa and beyond to regroup.
This will fend off intensified imperialist onslaughts by Western countries.
The West has, in recent times, upped the tempo in their combative bid to end liberation movements, particularly in Southern Africa, the last frontier of land and abundant mineral resources as well as resistance to neo-colonialism.
The idea, which has been laid bare by this publication over the years, is to install pliant governments that are insolently flaunted as ‘democratic’, modern and responsive to the people’s needs, in reality Western countries’ expectations and whims.
And the August 23 elections in Zimbabwe were meant to escalate that hideous drive with several liberation movements in the SADC region holding elections, including South Africa which will hold its election in 2024 where the ruling ANC is facing its sternest test yet to its more than a century of existence.
But where ZANU PF, and to an extent Zimbabwe, has survived, barely, the West’s relentless attacks on its sovereignty and existence, Libya, a thriving country under the NATO-slain Colonel Muammar Gadaffi was not so lucky.
A brutal, unjustified but ‘restoration of democracy’-touted invasion by the West’s military arm, NATO, in 2011, saw destruction of lives, livelihoods, infrastructure and looting of Libya’s resources.
Once one of the biggest economies in Africa and across the globe, Libya now survives on donations from the same people who destroyed it; something they have been trying to achieve in Zimbabwe but with no success.
But as the dust on the August 23 polls gradually settles, there continues to be disturbing developments that are emanating from Mumba’s country, Zambia, which has developed a repugnant relationship with the US, Zimbabwe’s chief aggressor over the past two decades.
Uncle Sam has been hovering dangerously on the precincts of Zimbabwe’s northern border, forging an ominous military alliance with Zambia whose Air Force received four Bell 412EP army helicopters as recent as September 11.
This military ‘strategic’ alliance is, without doubt, designed to pry on Harare.
Curiously the military helicopters ‘donation’ was announced by the Commander of US Africa Command, General Michael Langley at the Africa Senior Enlisted Leaders Conference (ASELC) which was co-hosted by the US and Zambia from September 10-13, with Zambia becoming the first African nation to host that gathering.
Zimbabwe has to be particularly wary of the annoying noises that are coming from its neighbours.
This is because it has never been hard to track what, exactly, Western countries want in all this – unfettered control of Zimbabwe’s land and natural resources.
It is, perhaps, the curse of empowering your citizens by redressing colonial imbalances that your success as a country and people is judged elsewhere.
As such, it is important to keep in mind that those noises are not being wrought by Zambians but by the warmongering Uncle Sam who has been yearning for a military confrontation with Zimbabwe since 2000.
This is where the conundrum lies for Uncle Sam and, indeed, the rest of the Western world.
In order for the West to have traction in Zimbabwe, they need a buy-in from Zimbabweans, something that has sorely eluded them in their more than two decades’ fight with Harare.
ZANU PF, like the ANC, Chama Cha Mapinduzi and other liberation movements, has no real challengers at home and thus have eyes and ears from abroad snooping on them with the help of locals — hence the Mumba and CCC unholy alliance.
That too, as with their previous vile attempts to subdue Zimbabwe, has spectacularly failed to achieve its intended objective — complete annihilation of Harare and its agonising history.
But they are not done with Zimbabwe yet.
They have now resorted to crude propaganda and misinformation to drag the country under global scrutiny.
According to a post-August 23 Elections paper by US-based Zimbabwe scholar Dr Dambudzo Mapuranga titled: ‘The Art of Stealing Elections through Misinformation: Zimbabwe’, the country’s detractors are manipulating and abusing social media to whip up people’s emotions in anticipation of uprisings which will never come.
Pro-opposition CCC entities, such as Team Pachedu, together with members of that party have been posting messages on social media designed to create the illusion of an unstable Zimbabwe.
“Having realised the loopholes and lack of proper media monitoring, the country’s detractors have been manipulating social media with the hope of breeding dissent, inculcating anti-ZANU PF sentiments, and fomenting anti-Government uprisings that would change Zimbabwe’s political environment in favour of the regime change agenda,” reads part of the report.
“Election conspiracy theories, outright lies and even calls for violence have been rampant on social media over the past five years.
These conspiracy theories included messaging that indirectly discouraged youths to participate in electoral processes particularly during the voter registration exercises; unsubstantiated claims to pre-election rigging by shadowy organizations such as Team Pachedu which sought to discredit the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, and outright lies that were intentionally spread to bring negative spotlight on the country.
Equally culpable in these illegalities and weaponisation of social media are local Western embassies, Western funded CSOs and NGOs and the opposition’s affiliates in the region and on the continent.
These various entities have been acting as force multipliers, amplifying the opposition’s misinformation, endorsing and validating these lies.”
This is why liberation movements must regroup to stave off the many lingering threats to their survival.
The West’s modus operandi has yet to change since time immemorial.
They thrive on destroying their enemies; real but mostly perceived and then pretend to be bringing what they say is ‘salvation’ to their victims.
Unlike Libya which was hit by bombs, Zimbabwe has been severely battered by illegal economic sanctions which Western-funded opposition leader Nelson Chamisa believes will be removed ‘by just one phone call to US President (and his brother) Joe Biden’.
This is the same salvation that Obama is pretending to bring to Libya which has been ravaged by Storm Daniel floods which have claimed more than 11 000 lives.
And Obama who has been calling for donations on his social media platform X has duly received flak from aggrieved Africans and other progressive minds of the world who are justly reminding him that a pre-NATO Libya invasion would have managed the situation without calling for donations from outsiders.
Libya had the resources which streamed down to the masses.
These are the resources that are now being looted by NATO countries that are sharing them as spoils of war, the same war that Uncle Sam is clamouring for from Zambia against Zimbabwe; against liberation movements across the globe.
That is the message that those who are inclined to liberation movements’ people-oriented agenda must embrace.
Western countries thrive on destroying to loot.
But in Zimbabwe, they have found a stubborn barricade to that calamitous agenda, and the people will duly resist those forbidding agendas.
