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The cost of American and European friendship

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US CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (CIA)-sponsored Mobutu Sese Seko, ruthlessly deposed revolutionary par excellence Patrice Lumumba just three months after he led the Congo to independence from Belgium in June of 1960.
Mobutu had Lumumba murdered on January 17 1961 at the behest of the UK, US, UN, Belgium and its allies.
The reason: Patrice Lumumba would not allow the West to continue to loot the country’s uranium, its ivory, coffee, rubber, gold, diamonds, cobalt, skins of animals such as crocodiles, hippopotamus, rare species of trees and millions of slaves.
They needed stooges who would allow this to go on. Mobutu Seseko fitted the part like a glove.
What is the difference between being CIA-sponsored and being a CIA agent?
The difference is academic; both pursue the goals of the CIA and both work for the CIA to achieve its goals and targets.
This is what the CIA-sponsored Mobutu did the moment they installed him into power:
– Reduced powers of Parliament and local authorities so as to vest more powers in himself.
– Banned all political parties and formed his own party which all Congolese had to join.
– Forced all trade unions to form one union which he put under government control, thus under his control.
– Was absolutely intolerant of any opposition and put down any dissent very brutally and maintained a state of emergency.
– Issued a new Constitution in 1967 which centred all powers in the president, thus himself, abolished the office of prime minister and subsumed these powers in himself. Political opponents, real or imagined, were publicly executed, for example his Prime Minister Everiste Kimba.
– In 1970, held an election in which he was the only presidential candidate and everyone had to vote and he claimed he got 99 percent of the vote
– The US, France and Belgium came to his assistance whenever the Congolese tried to oust him to save the nation from his brutal rule
– Amassed personal wealth estimated at US$5 billion while his people starved. Between himself, friends and relatives, they looted the national treasury until it ran dry with the consequence that the country’s infrastructure collapsed with no money to maintain it
– Mobutu instituted a personality cult, his picture was on everything; stamps, money and on buttons of civil servants’ uniforms.
Despite this, there was no regime change agenda to remove him, he was their agent, they left him to destroy the country for 32 years.
He was eventually ousted by his own people because of failing health.
Herman Cohen, in his book The Mind of the African Dictator, writes that the US needed Mobutu’s assistance to prop Jonas Savimbi in the Angolan civil war, so they kept him in power.
However, what is utterly dishonest is that he writes of African dictators when in fact it is the US which spawned and bolstered Mobutu until his ill health made it impossible for them to keep him in power.
Mobutu, thus, was not an African dictator but an instrument of the West created to be their first line of looting and plundering of the wealth of the Congolese.
He writes as if being a dictator is something to be found in the DNA of the African, when in fact these dictators are created by robbers from the West.
After a lengthy interview with Cohen on his book, Shannon Ebrahim had this to say:
“I found myself utterly shocked by the rationale put forward for the US support for dictators like Mobutu, at the expense of the development of African countries.
But perhaps more shocking is the lack of introspection, regret, or guilt for America’s role in keeping dictators in power.
The finger is always pointed outwards, and long lectures given on the need for good governance in Africa today, and the need to curb corruption. But it was US backing for Africa’s grand thieves that entrenched the cancer of corruption on the continent.”
However, Shannon misses a very critical point; the dictators were not Africa’s grand thieves, they always were, and are, fronts for America and Europe’s thievery.
The grand thieves are the Europeans and the Americans!
Shannon admits that without US guns and money Mobutu would have been removed by his own people long before. He writes: “But it was the US that ensured the longevity of the continent’s worst strongmen and enabled their continued rape of African countries.
The saddest part is that it was for the most flimsy of reasons that the US supported such dictators, without a passing thought for their people or their future, Shannon concludes.”
It is claimed the US needed Mobutu as a conduit for its support to Jonas Savimbi in Angola’s civil war, thus prolonging “…a brutal civil war that in the end claimed the lives of half a million Angolans and displaced 3,5 million?”
Is it possible to comprehend the loss of half a million lives; to quantify the pain and suffering of 3,5 million people; the trauma of homelessness; loss of property; loss of community life; disease and hunger which results from being refugees?
The Europeans and the Americans have dismissed Zimbabwe as an equal partner on the world stage for various nefarious reasons.
It takes a Mobutu to be a friend of the Americans and Europeans.

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