Maravi

(TALKZIMBABWE) Tsvangirai, sanctions and foreign trips

COMMENT - Is there any doubt that the US government under Hillary Clinton is trying to run specific parts of the Zimbabwean government? And all in a defense of their diamond mining backers (can you say: Oppenheimer - who after all control 90% of the world's diamond reserves - the value of diamonds depends on that monopoly, and they will do anything to maintain it). The Oppenheimers had 1/3 of their DEBSHAN ranch redistributed back in 2001. The act mentioned in this article is sponsored by ZDERA co-sponsor Russ Feingold, and is reported to be titled the Zimbabwe Transition to Democracy and Economic Recovery Act. The US has no business trying to run, demonize or manipulate the Zimbabwean government or Zimbabwean domestic policy, especially when that policy breaks no laws.

Tsvangirai, sanctions and foreign trips
By: Tendai Midzi
Posted: Friday, May 14, 2010 10:42 am

PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's visit to Washington to receive yet another "human rights award" is interesting. It comes at a time when that country is crafting yet another version, a more notorious version of the Zimbabwe Democracy Recovery Act (ZDERA).

It has become almost completely predictable that whenever the US is rethinking another regime change strategy, a leading figure from the opposition MDC-T is in that country.

The Minister of Finance Tendai Biti, who is also the secretary general of the MDC-T party made countless trips to the US in the past few months; masked as trips to the IMF/World Bank.

The Bretton Woods institutions have made it clear that they will not open up credit lines for Zimbabwe, so Biti's trips could not have made much sense at this juncture. One thing is clear though. The US wants to start funding "certain elements" in the inclusive Government legally. With the outcry on parallel government structures clearly gaining prominence, the US is being forced to amend ZDERA to open up "credit lines" for MDC-T-run ministries.

The amendments will see Washington extend financial assistance to these select Government ministries and the US will be openly, although illegally, supporting MDC-T ministers.

MDC-T spokesman Nelson Chamisa says the party has no hand in all of this. "It's being done in America, what do you want us to say." If he has no say in what happens in America regarding Zimbabwe, why does Tsvangirai give a brief to Americans on Zimbabweans? Why do we even bother to have diplomatic relations with America.

Revision of ZDERA should be resisted at any cost. Only repulsion of that illegal and nototious piece of legislation will satisfy the people of Zimbabwe, who have suffered at the behest of the MDC-T party who called for those sanctions in the first place.

We hope that, as prime minister Tsvangirai is treated with pomp and ceremony in Washington, he will remember the millions he was responsible for driving to poverty in Zimbabwe.

We hope that he will not only fight for Roy Bennett's rights from Washington, but the rights of millions of Zimbabweans who suffered to get their decency and democracy from a racist white government of Ian Smith.

It is interesting that Tsvangirai has completely avoided the UK since he was last booed. One would have hoped that with the installation of a new government in that country, and the disintegration of MDC-T structures in the country, it would have made more sense to come to Britain. This man simply does not find it easy to be heckled and booed.

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Tendai Midzi is a lecturer in economics at London Guildhall University.

Labels: MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, NEOCOLONIALISM, SANCTIONS, TREASON, ZDERA

posted by MrK @ 3:27 PM