REMARKS by President Emmerson Mnangagwa that SADC member-States and Africa must never surrender their hard-won freedoms and destiny to the intrusive West are typified by how Zimbabwe has stood up to marauding foreign powers that have sought, and are still seeking, to destabilise Harare.
And the efforts to destabilise the country have since doubled in the wake of a collapsing West’s hegemonic control of global political and economic affairs.
Democracy lasted two centuries in Ancient Greece. From the looks of things Western democracy has reached the two- century mark, the age at which it catches an incurable cancer.
The unprecedented rise of China as a global economic powerhouse, and the West’s failure to subdue Russia are pointing towards the inevitable fall of Western powers’ unipolar world.
Zimbabwe has, in the past two decades, been used as an example of the ‘danger’ of incurring the wrath of the West by being severely punished for embarking on the revolutionary land reform in 2000.
Its revolutionary torch has, however, not been blown out despite unrelenting waves of attacks on its citizens’ livelihoods and the economy.
Confronted by their weakening grip on the globe, Western powers are resorting to their old and tired tactic of blackmailing supposed ‘weaker’ nations to support their senseless fight against China and Russia.
As has been the case with Zimbabwe, that too will fail.
Zimbabwe has defied the odds, steadily wriggling its way out of the doldrums through an economic revival plan that has been a marvel to watch even to some of its fiercest opponents.
Western countries are not happy.
They are putting pressure on some SADC countries to isolate Harare.
In 2000, the Americans launched the African Growth and Opportunity Act, (AGOA). The programme was crafted to allow sub-Saharan countries ‘preferential’ access to US markets by eliminating import tariffs.
This partnership, enacted under President Bill Clinton, was meant to whip African States into line.
Contrary to what American envoys and the opposition claim, Zimbabwe has never been part of this arrangement as a penalty for the land reform and voting for Zanu PF.
This means even small private businesses were barred from this free trade agreement simply because they were Zimbabwean.
AGOA’s legalisation outlined requirements candidates must fulfil, such as upholding the rule of law and respect for human rights and liberalising their economies.
Liberalising economies is what got Zimbabwe and some African countries in trouble with the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) in the first place.
Zimbabwe opened up its markets to foreign competition in the 1990s which led to consumers preferring foreign products to Zimbabwe’s local products.
Africa exposed its markets to free trade before its economies were strong enough to take competition.
Under the new dispensation, there has been a drive to domestically grow our economy by urging the locals to ‘buy Zimbabwe’ and reduce dependency on imports.
At the beginning of this year, the US removed Ethiopia, Guinea and Mali from AGOA, citing a breach of their rules.
Ethiopia, for example, relied heavily on the American deal for its textile industry and was soon left in the cold. Ethiopia landed right in the hands of China which has heavily invested in the country and on the continent with its no-strings-attached approach to investment.
With Chinese trade outpacing the West and AGOA reportedly on the decline, America is becoming desperate – and a desperate America is dangerous.
“We also said that what is happening in Europe should not divide us. We should not be superintended by foreign powers. We should be solid and remain solid and uphold the principles of our founding fathers of the region,” said President Mnangagwa after attending the 42nd Ordinary Summit of SADC Heads of State and Government in the DRC.
“This is even more critical as the world is witnessing the re-emergence of policies and oppressive systems which we fought and overcame.
Today we stand tall as sovereign and independent countries with equal standing like all others within the community of nations.
The US (Countering) Malign Russian Activities in Africa Bill is a case in point. Such retrogressive pieces of legislation have no place in the world of today and go against the grain and spirit of the United Nations Charter.
‘Might’ ought not to be misconstrued as tantamount to be automatically right.”
He went on, taking aim at so-called powerful States for cohearsing perceived weaker nations to endorse their cruel cause:
“The misplaced inflated posturing by some powerful States with their doctrine of ‘either you are with me or you are against me, and if you are not with me, you are an object of unilateral sanctions,’ is unacceptable. We must never give up. We must never surrender our fate and destiny on the altar of social, economic and political expediency,” he said.
“We regret this worrisome trend which undermines our sovereign right to independently determine our own future; a right that we have fought for, that was not handed to us on a silver platter.
Individually and collectively, we will never betray or depart from our sacred duty to honour the many sons and daughters of Africa who paid the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom and democracy we are enjoying today.”
Uncle Sam has been on the wapath, picking up fights with China and Russia whose close ties with Africa are unsettling the tumbling giant.
A US-initiated resolution for the UN General Assembly to suspend Russia’s membership of the Human Rights Council on April 7 2022 was met with serious resistance and reservations by African countries when only 10 out of 54 nations on the continent voted in favour of the resolution while nine were opposed and 35 abstained.
Miffed by Africa’s refusal to endorse its madness, on April 27 2022, the US Senate put the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Bill to a vote with 415 members voting in favour while nine were against.
The Bill was sponsored by Republican Senator Gregory Weldon Meeks who chairs the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and it will require the State Department to send a report every year to Congress on Uncle Sam’s measures to counter Russia’s alleged machinations in Africa.
As was the case at the height of Britain and America’s onslaught on Zimbabwe, the other side of the Atlantic could not be left out in the fight against Russia.
The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has waded into the anti-Russia offensive, publishing a malicious report titled ‘Security, Soft Power, and Regime Support: Spheres of Russian Influence in Africa’ which says “…in recent years, Russia had presented itself to Africa as a military partner mostly to countries with a questionable democracy and human rights record in exchange for natural resources. This is seen as the superpower’s bid to rekindle old Soviet-era ties.”
Tony Blair cajoled the EU and the US to slap Zimbabwe with illegal economic sanctions over the Land Reform Programme.
On June 4 2004, Blair infamously revealed in the House of Commons that:
“On the latter two points, we work closely with the MDC (now CCC) on the measures that we should take in respect of Zimbabwe, although I am afraid that these measures and sanctions, although we have them in place, are of limited effect on the Mugabe Regime.
We must be realistic about that….it is important that we give every chance to, and make every effort to try to help those in South Africa – the Southern part of Africa (sic) to put pressure for change on the Mugabe regime because there is no salvation for the people of Zimbabwe until that regime is changed.”
Uncle Sam claims his vile Bill seeks “…to hold to account African governments and their officials who are complicit in aiding Russia’s malign influence and activities.”
The Bill seeks to: “Regularly assess the scale and scope of the Russian Federation’s influence and activities in Africa that undermine United States objectives and interests, and determine how to address and counter such influence and activities effectively, including through appropriate United States foreign assistance programmes; and to hold accountable the Russian Federation and African governments and their officials who are complicit in aiding such malign influence and activities.”
So the world, Africa in particular, must hate and disassociate with Russia, whom it does not have any beef with, just that the objectives and interests of the US are furthered.
There is a school of thought that believes that the Ukraine war is not about Ukraine, but Germany. The war was meant to separate Germany from getting too close to Russia -something that had steadily been happening.
Just as their invasion of Libya was clocked on the pretext of human rights but was a terror operation to stop the unification of Africa and loot gold and oil according to the alleged leaked Hillary Clinton private emails.
What of Africa’s interests?
As the world draws towards the fall of Western hegemony, Russian President Vladimir Putin says a new World Order is emerging.
“They need conflicts to retain their hegemony,” said President Putin while addressing a security conference attended by military officials from Africa, Asia and Latin America on Tuesday last week,
“That’s why they have turned the Ukrainian people into cannon fodder. The situation in Ukraine shows that the United States is trying to drag the conflict out, and it acts in exactly the same way trying to fuel conflicts in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The American adventure in Taiwan wasn’t just a trip by an irresponsible politician. It was part of a deliberate and conscious US strategy intended to destabilise the situation and create chaos in the region and the entire world, a blatant demonstration of disrespect for another country’ sovereignty and its own international obligations.
Western globalist elites are trying to shift the blame for their own failures to Russia and China.
The era of the unipolar World Order is nearing its end,”
For Zimbabwe, the beginning of history is here and next year’s elections will only consolidate that position as the stuttering opposition will be thrown into oblivion.