THE most significant aspect about US Vice-President Kamala Harris’ visit to Africa last week was her country’s palpable exasperation with China and Russia’s growing global influence.
Zambia was the last leg of her tour of Africa after visiting Ghana and Tanzania that were subjected to lectures on how to write history and ‘tell their own stories’.
“Being here was immensely powerful and moving, when we think about how human beings were treated by the hundreds of thousands in this very place that we now stand, the crimes that happened here, the blood that was shed here,” Harris said from Ghana’s Cape Coast Castle, ‘Door of no Return’, where millions were forcefully shipped to work as slaves in Europe, the US and the Caribbean.
“They came to this place of horror, some to die, many to starve and be tortured, women to be raped before they were then forcibly taken on a journey thousands of miles from their home to be sold by so-called merchants and taken to the Americas, to the Caribbean to be an enslaved people. It cannot be denied. It must be taught. History must be learned.” 
But several States, including Florida, Georgia and Texas, have enacted and endorsed new laws to limit teaching about the role of racism in the US where black people have been subjected to some of the worst forms of abuse in recent times.
Tanzanians were reminded of the so-called ‘famous’ meeting between President Julius Nyerere and John F. Kennedy.
Africans and black people are not amused by the abuse that their kith and kin are enduring in the US.
As such, for the US, reframing its previously warped view of Africa has, in recent times, been top of their overall 2023 agenda, especially in their effort to thwart China and Russia’s growing influence in Africa.
But China and Russia’s long established relations with several African countries are being strengthened on the back of Western countries’ waning grip on global affairs and the emergence of the East as unifiers and conveyor belts of trade on platforms of equality.
That has nudged the West, led by the US, to embark on whirlwind tours of Africa where they are, as usual, trying to divide the continent by laying siege on countries that enjoy cordial relations with China and Russia.  
Vice-President Harris was the third top US official to visit Africa this year alone.
Senior officials, like Secretary for Treasury Janet Yellen who embarked on a 10-day visit of Senegal, Zambia and South Africa from January 20 where she sought to project the US as a ‘true friend’ of Africa, was the first high profile American to kick-start the tours.
“The United States is all in on Africa, all in with Africa,” she said in Dakar, Senegal, before laying bare the real purpose of her visit.
“While our approach may be exacting, we believe it delivers lasting results. Our engagement is not transactional, it’s not for show, and it’s not for the short-term.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Ethiopia and Niger from March 14-17 where again China and Russia were up for discussion from what is now becoming a visibly desperate Uncle Sam.
That country’s President Joseph Biden and his wife Jill are expected to visit the continent this year.
Africa, which boasts the youngest population in the world, has largely untapped mineral resources, like copper, cobalt, lithium and nickel, which are critical to the green world which the West keeps on telling the globe that is the direction it should take.
For Zimbabwe, Vice-President Harris’ visit to Zambia is something that should be analysed to the very last detail while keeping in mind that the regime change agenda and efforts to sabotage the country’s economy has not waned.
The build up to her trip to Zambia had been somewhat laden with a not so subtle attempt to teach the SADC region about democracy as it came a day after Zambia had co-hosted the so-called Summit for Democracy with the US, the Netherlands, Korea and Ukraine.
The US and Western countries’ claims that Zimbabwe is an undemocratic country quickly come to mind when unpacking the enormity of the regime change agenda package that has been, and is being, deployed by Western countries to paralyse Harare.
Western countries are simply trying to use Zambia as a template of what should happen in Zimbabwe in the 2023 harmonised elections and indeed across the rest of the SADC region.
Their plan revolves around removing liberation movements in SADC and across Africa from power, banking on the youth dividend on the continent.
ZANU PF has seen through the plan and the numbers, as seen in its recent primary elections, are telling — and in many ways too.
Ideas take precedence in any revolution and, as was the case during the liberation struggle, the idea that young people are the future is playing out in the ruling Party which resonates well with the country’s aspirations of unity, peace and development.
The summit, said Harris, was critical in promoting democracy and good governance on the African continent.
To make good of her country’s commitment to ‘democracy’, Zambia was given US$16 million to fight corruption and advance ‘other reform efforts’.
This was one of the many promises made to Lusaka during that ‘historic’ visit.
“I am pleased to announce more than US$16 million in a new programme for Zambia, including a focus on anti-corruption and other reform efforts,” Harris told a joint press conference in the capital Lusaka with Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema.
But Fred M’membe, leader of the Socialist Party, an opposition party in Zambia, has different views.
“They (US) have come to Southern Africa to teach us democracy!” he said last week.
“A country that was opposed to our liberation, a country that supported colonial regimes, the apartheid regime in South Africa, the white racist minority in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, the Portuguese colonial government in Mozambique, Angola, Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, today is coming to Africa to teach us about democracy
A country that has toppled many governments in Africa, that has led so many coups in Africa and other parts of the world, a country that has killed so many leaders in Africa and other parts of the world, the killers of Patrice Lumumba (the DR Congo), those who toppled Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), those who killed Muammar Gaddafi (Libya), today is coming to teach us about democracy.”
To Vice-President Harris and the rest of the US establishment, this matters little.
They want to force their way into Zambia and SADC, with Zimbabwe their target, so they take aim at the Chinese who are doing big things in the country to provoke Harare.
“We will continue to advocate speedy finalisation of Zambia’s debt treatment and the restructuring, and we have talked extensively about that,” she said.
“Our administration believes the international community needs to help countries such as Zambia regain their footing. So I will reiterate a call I have made many times for all bilateral official creditors to provide a meaningful debt reduction for Zambia.”
Ironically, a few kilometres from Lusaka is a country called Zimbabwe whose economy has been destroyed by the warmongering Uncle Sam who created a law blocking the same international community and international financial institutions from supporting Harare’s economic development programmes because little Zimbabwe decided to hand over to the majority their land and natural resources.
Talk of double standards!