(SUNDAY MAIL ZW) Nkrumah will never die
Saturday, 25 May 2013 00:00
Kwame Nkrumah, the visionary who led Ghana to independence in 1957, is widely revered as Africa’s greatest son.
Yes, the greatest African of all time is neither Nelson Mandela nor Patrice Lumumba. It is the Osagyefo (the redeemer), Kwame Nkrumah.
On this historic occasion as Africa celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Organisation of African Union (now the African Union), we fondly remember Nkrumah.
Africa has recorded remarkable achievements since 1963, particularly in the realm of political independence, but a lot more needs to be done to usher in economic independence. It is not yet uhuru. The continent is crying out for true Pan-Africanist leadership to deliver the masses to the Promised Land.
Nkrumah’s ideas, philosophy and vision for Africa are as alive today as they were in 1963.
In the spirit of Africa’s golden jubilee festivities, we publish, below, an abridged version of Nkrumah’s epoch-defining speech at the founding of the OAU on May 24 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia:
“I am happy to be here in Addis Ababa on this most historic occasion. I bring with me the hopes and fraternal greetings of the government and people of Ghana. Our objective is African union now. There is no time to waste. We must unite now or perish. I am confident that by our concerted effort and determination, we shall lay here the foundations for a continental Union of African states. A whole continent has imposed a mandate upon us to lay the foundation of our union at this conference. It is our responsibility to execute this mandate by creating here and now, the formula upon which the requisite superstructure may be created.
“On this continent, it has not taken us long to discover that the struggle against colonialism does not end with the attainment of national independence. Independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and social affairs; to construct our society according to our aspirations, unhampered by crushing and humiliating neo-colonialist controls and interference.
“From the start we have been threatened with frustration where rapid change is imperative and with instability where sustained effort and ordered rule are indispensable. No sporadic act nor pious resolution can resolve our present problems. Nothing will be of avail, except the united act of a united Africa. We have already reached the stage where we must unite or sink into that condition which has made Latin America the unwilling and distressed prey of imperialism after one-and-a-half centuries of political independence.
“As a continent, we have emerged into independence in a different age, with imperialism grown stronger, more ruthless and experienced, and more dangerous in its international associations. Our economic advancement demands the end of colonialist and neo-colonialist domination of Africa. But just as we understood that the shaping of our national destinies required of each of us our political independence and bent all our strength to this attainment, so we must recognise that our economic independence resides in our African union and requires the same concentration upon the political achievement. The unity of our continent, no less than our separate independence, will be delayed if, indeed, we do not lose it, by hobnobbing with colonialism.
“African unity is, above all, a political kingdom which can only be gained by political means. The social and economic development of Africa will come only within the political kingdom, not the other way round. Is it not unity alone that can weld us into an effective force, capable of creating our own progress and making our valuable contribution to world peace? Which independent African state, which of you here, will claim that its financial structure and banking institutions are fully harnessed to its national development? Which will claim that its material resources and human energies are available for its own national aspirations? Which will disclaim a substantial measure of disappointment and disillusionment in its agricultural and urban development? In independent Africa, we are already re-experiencing the instability and frustration which existed under colonial rule. We are fast learning that political independence is not enough to rid us of the consequences of colonial rule.
“The movement of the masses of the people of Africa for freedom from that kind of rule was not only a revolt against the conditions which it imposed. Our people supported us in our fight for independence because they believed that African governments could cure the ills of the past in a way which could never be accomplished under colonial rule.
“If, therefore, now that we are independent we allow the same conditions to exist that existed in colonial days, all the resentment which overthrew colonialism will be mobilised against us. The resources are there. It is for us to marshal them in the active service of our people. Unless we do this by our concerted efforts, within the framework of our combined planning, we shall not progress at the tempo demanded by today’s events and the mood of our people. The symptoms of our troubles will grow, and the troubles themselves become chronic. It will then be too late for pan-African unity to secure for us stability and tranquillity in our labours for a continent of social justice and material wellbeing.
“Our continent certainly exceeds all the others in potential hydroelectric power, which some experts assess as 42% of the world’s total. What need is there for us to remain hewers of wood and drawers of water for the industrialised areas of the world? It is said, of course, that we have no capital, no industrial skill, no communications, and no internal markets, and that we cannot even agree among ourselves how best to utilise our resources for our own social needs. Yet all stock exchanges in the world are preoccupied with Africa’s gold, diamonds, uranium, platinum, copper and iron ore.
“Our capital flows out in streams to irrigate the whole system of Western economy. Fifty-two percent of the gold in Fort Knox at this moment, where the USA stores its bullion, is believed to have originated from our shores. Africa provides more than 60% of the world’s gold. A great deal of the uranium for nuclear power, of copper for electronics, of titanium for supersonic projectiles, of iron and steel for heavy industries, of other minerals and raw materials for lighter industries — the basic economic might of the foreign powers — come from our continent.
“We have the resources. It was colonialism in the first place that prevented us from accumulating the effective capital; but we ourselves have failed to make full use of our power in independence to mobilise our resources for the most effective take-off into thorough-going economic and social development.
“We have been too busy nursing our separate states to understand fully the basic need of our union, rooted in common purpose, common planning and common endeavour. A union that ignores these fundamental necessities will be but a sham. It is only by uniting our productive capacity and the resultant production that we can amass capital. And once we start, the momentum will increase.
“With capital controlled by our own banks, harnessed to our own true industrial and agricultural development, we shall make our advance.”
Labels: KWAME NKRUMAH, PANAFRICANISM
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(STICKY) (BLACK STAR NEWS) The choice is clear: Africa must embrace Nkrumah's vision and Unite
Milton Allimadi
May 26,2013
The question of African unity has been on some front pages this week as the African Union (AU) reflects on 50 years of existence, with the Organization of African Unity (OAU) being its earlier incarnation.
A unified Africa, under one continental government, remains the best solution for dealing with Africa's myriad problems, in this 21st century and beyond.
A United States of Africa, with a continental army, would secure control of the continent's immense wealth for the benefit of its people and for uplifting millions out of poverty.
Counting Africa south of the Sahara alone, the armed forces would have about 2 million men and women under arms; combined with the north African armies the total would be more than four million. By comparison: India has 4.7 million; China has a total force of 4.5 million; Russia 3.5 million; the United States, about 2.3 million; and, Britain 400,000.
Africa is endowed with almost every type of natural and mineral resource wealth. Yet these are currently primarily used to fuel the economies of the industrialized countries, and the emerging ones such as China's, India's and Brazil's rather than for the benefit of African countries.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) alone contains mineral and natural resources whose value is estimated at nearly $30 trillion.
These include: high quality timber; gold; diamonds (30% of the world's reserves); coltan (70% of the world's reserves); copper; cobalt; and, many other minerals.
Yet Congolese remain impoverished. Foreign powers allow bandits financed by Rwanda and Uganda to wreak havoc in Congo's eastern region, which contains most of its resources. Under this planned chaos, private corporations enjoy absolute rent; they siphon off Congo's resources through Rwanda and Uganda without paying fees or taxes to the central government.
In the meantime, the bandit militias have ethnically cleansed the resource-containing zones through depopulation to make it easier to plunder resources. Ten million Congolese have perished since Rwanda and Uganda first invaded in 1997. The military and political elite in Rwanda and Uganda have become wealthy under this profitable genocide: the Western corporations that purchase the blood minerals have profited the most.
The Western powers allow genocide in Congo without any consequences to the political and military leadership in Rwanda and Uganda. The major media outlets such as The New York Times, CNN and the BBC, which could influence public opinion to demand that Western powers sanction Rwanda and Uganda remain silent; they essentially aid and abet genocide in Africa. The media outlets are very partisan when making demands that suit their interests: such as calling for intervention in Libya and Syria.
Congo's tragedy is only one of many other illustrations of the type of calamity that Kwame Nkrumah feared would beset the continent, if Africa did not unite. Nkrumah himself had tried to prevent the earlier attempt to dismember Congo, that led to the murder of Patrice Lumumba by Belgian agents and Moise Tshombe's collaborationist regime.
Nkrumah appealed for continental unity when leaders of newly-independent African nations first met on May 24, 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to form the Organization of African Unity (OAU); the predecessor of the AU.
"Unite we must," Nkrumah said. "Without necessarily sacrificing our sovereignties, big or small, we can here and now forge a political union based on defence, foreign affairs and diplomacy, and a common citizenship, an African currency, an African monetary zone, and an African central bank. We must unite in order to achieve the full liberation of our continent."
Nkrumah warned that decolonization on paper was not sufficient to protect African countries. Western countries would still need the continent's vast mineral and natural resource wealth to continue fueling their economies. He noted that half the gold at Fort Knox, in the United States, originated from Africa.
So long as African countries remained weak and divided, their economies would remain underdeveloped unless they could change the terms of trade with the industrialized countries, Nkrumah warned.
This is because Western countries determined the price at which raw materials from African countries were sold to the industrialized countries; these same industrialized countries also controlled the price at which African countries purchased manufactured products from them.
Nkrumah called this a "neo-colonial" relationship; he said it would ensure that African countries remained impoverished. And without the ability to protect their resources, eventually, African countries would not be able to protect their national sovereignty, their boundaries, or their formal independence from colonial powers such as Britain and France.
African countries had to deal on equal terms with the industrialized world, Nkrumah said. This could only be accomplished if the individual African countries came together under one umbrella: with a continental government; a continental currency; a continental national armed forces; and, common foreign relations policy.
"No independent African state today by itself has a chance to follow an independent course of economic development, and many of us who have tried to do this have been almost ruined or have had to return to the fold of the former colonial rulers," Nkrumah had warned. "This position will not change unless we have a unified policy working at the continental level. The first step towards our cohesive economy would be a unified monetary zone, with, initially, an agreed common parity for our currencies."
At the 1963 OAU conference two distinct camps emerged: those who, led by Nkrumah, supported speedy move towards African unity; and, another camp that supported a more gradual approach that would focus on regional economic integration that would then broaden later.
Even if the gradualism approach had merit at some point, it comes at a very high cost today. It's so open-ended that it could take another 50 years with minimal success.
In the meantime, many recent incidents confirm that Nkrumah's worst fears continue to be fulfilled: collectively, a continent of millions exercises minimal control over its own affairs and the will of African leaders can be ignored with impunity.
The former colonial powers are now brazenly involved in the continent's affairs with impunity.
In 2010, it was primarily France, Britain and Italy, all former colonial rulers, that successfully advocated for NATO's military intervention and aerial invasion of Libya. The United States joined the campaign.
The months of uninterrupted indiscriminate bombing led to: deaths of countless Libyan civilians; destruction of the country's impressive infrastructure built with its oil wealth; and, the brutal murder of the long-time ruler Muammar al-Quathafi who in recent years had become the most vocal advocate of African unity.
The Libyan debacle demonstrated Africa's political impotence to the entire world. When the AU tasked South Africa's president Jacob Zuma with leading an African-supported peace plan, he needed permission from NATO command to travel to Libya. Under the no-fly zone his plane could have been shot down.
Zuma convinced al-Quathafi to sign on to the AU plan which called for: a ceasefire; a humanitarian corridor for civilians; and, internationally-monitored elections. The NATO powers instructed their insurgents not to sign on. The powers had no interest in democracy in Libya; each coveted the country's vast oil and natural gas supplies.
Today Libya is in chaos -- no one is talking about democracy or accountability and liability for NATO's destructive war which replaced a stable state with anarchy and also promoted the ethnic cleansing of Black Libyans, including the annihilation of the city of Tawargha.
Similarly, in the Ivory Coast, it wasn't an African solution that broke the stalemate between Alasanne Quatarra and Laurent Gbagbo, both of whom claimed they had won presidential elections. France's air-forces turned the tide in Quatarra's favor and routed Gbagbo's army; the loser is now at the Hague, awaiting trial by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has become an agency for enforcing the political will of Western countries. Quattara's own armed forces continues to commit atrocities, without a murmur from the ICC since he's the anointed Western leader.
After the collapse of the al-Quathafi regime, radicals seized sophisticated weapons from his destroyed army's armory and invaded Mali, seizing nearly half of the country. France sent an intervention army to clean up the mess it had helped precipitate since some of the radicals who invaded Mali were the same forces that NATO had empowered in Libya.
In the Central African Republic (CAR), France maintains an army in the capital of Bangui. In Mali, the French army was decisive in helping to repel the invaders, including from Timbuktu. Yet, in the CAR, the French army stood by and allowed rebels to seize control of the capital; clearly the deposed regime no longer fulfilled France's own interests.
In Libya, France and Britain still hope to be rewarded, when the smoke clears, with favorable terms for oil and natural gas concessions; in the Ivory Coast, as in Mali, France has re-established a neo-colonial relationship; and, the CAR has always been a French neo-colony.
These are the kind of conflicts, conducted by weak and myopic African rulers and role players on one side; and their accomplices, Western regimes and unscrupulous corporations on the other side.
As other regions of the world, in Asia, Europe, South America, move towards regional economic and political integration, in many parts of Africa the politics are retrogressing and conditions resemble the "banana republic" era that once bedeviled South America.
We now see how Nkrumah's fears have come to fruition when even an eroded power such as France can exercise such disproportional control and influence over Africa's destiny and over events on the continent.
Until China became unified in the 1950s, Western countries used to treat China the same way as African countries are dealt with today: Now China has emerged as a major economic and political power globally.
There is no question that a United States of Africa offers the key for Africans to seize control of their destiny and this is what the younger generation of Africans must demand.
Young Africans must demand for elected progressive governments that are accountable to voters and then push these governments to embrace African unity as an imperative.
A United States of Africa would eliminate many of the conflicts, including the most bloody ones such as the ones between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and in Burundi; and the genocide in Congo by Rwanda's and Uganda's armies and militias. Moreover, Rwanda's Gen. Paul Kagame and Uganda's Gen. Yoweri Museveni would no longer have the powers to order illegal invasions of any territory in Africa.
A United States of Africa would allow the continent to negotiate for fairer terms of trade since Africa would speak with the clout of a powerful government and a huge single market for goods and services.
A United States of Africa would combine all the militaries into one powerful continental Armed Force capable of repelling any foreign armed transgressions. Africa would also be able to demand the removal of foreign military bases from the continent.
The choice is clear: Africa must embrace Nkrumah's vision.
Africa must unite.
Labels: KWAME NKRUMAH, LIBYA, NEOCOLONIALISM, REGIONAL INTEGRATION
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Lumumba: From a mere man to a lasting symbol
Mabuto Sese Seko
Monday, 09 May 2011 19:48
Patrice Lumumba is one of the few African leaders who are still remembered 50 years after their death. Yet he only ruled for three month months! And he died at the young age of 35! So why is he still so fondly remembered? Cameron Duodu examines the phenomenon.
I can still remember it like yesterday - the day, 50 solid years ago, when Ghana's president, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, made a special broadcast to announce solemnly to the nation that he had "received information" that Patrice Lumumba, the Prime Minister of Congo, had been assassinated.
Lumumba had been arrested, first by Mobutu's troops, and then sent to Katanga province, where his worst enemy, Moise Tshombe, and his secessionist forces reigned supreme, despite the presence of United Nations troops in the area.
President Nkrumah did not disclose his sources, of course, but anyone who knew that he had excellent contacts with the USSR, whose intelligence service at the time were second to none, would have been a fool to doubt that his information was absolutely reliable.
Nkrumah went as far as to say that a "Belgian policeman" had been charge of the deed.
This was an incredible bit of prescience: it was not until the 2001 publication in Belgium of The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba by Ludo De Witte, that the exact circumstances of the assassination became widely known.
And they tallied exactly with the information Nkrumah gave his countrymen nearly half a century ealier.
Ghanaians were stunned. For Nkrumah had involved the whole nation in trying to save Lumumba and his country from the machinations of the Belgians.
As will be seen later, Ghanaian troops were sent to Congo - the first time soldiers form an independent African country had gone to the service of another independent African country.
But more than that, all sorts of skilled Ghanaians also went to Congo - doctors, artisans, even journalists. (Edward Armah, a veteran of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, was, attached to the Ghanaian contingent to enable the soldiers to send messages to their families back home, and his colleagues in Accra contacted some of the families to send messages back to the soldiers. Special, powerful transmissions - "Interactive transmissions" - were carried out to enable this to occur.)
How did Lumumba, an obscure politician, who made his public outing on the international scene only when he attended the All-African People's Conference in Acra in December 1958, become an African icon, whose place in history is at the very top of the tree on which African heroes perch, where he will stay for ever?
Indeed, Lumumba is next only to Nelson Mandela in terms of being the all-time unblemished figure who most readily comes to mind when Africa is discussed in relation to struggle.
Even Mandela had lesser enemies to contend with: Lumumba was chased around by both the CIA and its Belgian subsidiary, with whom it co-operated through Nato!
Not only that - Mandela suffered tremendously. But he won.
Lumumba, on the other hand, lost - he lost power, he lost his country, and in the end, he lost his life.
All were forcibly taken from him by a combination of forces that were probably the most powerful ever deployed against a single individual in history.
In his book, Ludo De Witte calls Lumumba's murder "the most important political assassination in the 20th century."
The amazing thing is that Lumumba had done absolutely nothing against those who wanted his blood!
They just saw him as a threat to their interests; interests narrowly defined to mean, "His country has got resources. We want them. He might not give them to us. So let's get him".
I submit, though, that he should not be seen only as a victim of forces too powerful for him to contend with.
On the contrary, he should be seen as someone who fully recognised the power of the forces ranged against him and fought valiantly with every ounce of breath in his body and with great intelligence to try and save his country.
If Lumumba's fate contrasts with that of Mandela, who was imprisoned for tangible acts against South Africa's apartheid regime, we see that, in the history of the African people's struggle in the 20th century, Mandela and Lumumba represent different ends of the spectrum of activity.
We can say too that the two men represent the beacon of the light that shines sharply to bring absolute clarity into the evaluation of a history often mired in obfuscation and mendacity.
To those who say, "How wonderful it was to see in Mandela, the issue of oppression so peacefully resolved", we need only point to that picture of Patrice Lumumba, a torturer's hand in his hair, as he was brutalised in a truck by black Kantangese soldiers at Elizabethville (now Lubumbashi).
In that picture of Lumumba, serious students can spy unseen hands, steered by a "heart of darkness", bribing, mixing poisons, assembling rifles with telescopic sights, and finally propping an elected prime minister against a tree in the bush and riddling his body with bullets.
And then - could even Joseph Conrad, in his worst nightmarish ramblings, have imagined this?
First, burying Lumumba's body, then exhuming it a day later because the burial ground was too close to a road, and then hacking it to pieces, and shoving the pieces into a barrel filled with sulphuric acid, to dissolve it.
And would Joseph Conrad have been able to picture the murderer making sure to break off two front teeth from Lumumba's jaw, to keep as a memento to show off to the grandchildren in Brussels in years to come? As well as one of the bullets that killed him?
If Shakespeare could write black comedy, we might have got dialogue like this: "Grandpa, what didst thou do in the Congo?" "I exterminated Lumumba - and mark thee, that's why I live in comfortable retirement and, never ye forget this - that's wherefore ye went to such expensive schools. Here - see? Two of his very teeth that I broke off and brought home! And this - the bullet that finished the job!!"
A Belgian, nearly 60 years after Conrad published his Heart of Darkness - and 57 years after Roger Casement and E D Morel had made what they hoped was a definitive exposure of the crimes King Leopold II of Belgium had committed against the Congolese people - could still engage in such barbarities against a leader elected on the basis of a constitution signed into law by Leopold II's own grandson, King Baudoin I.
That sordid crime in the bush near Elizabethville 50 years ago was the logical conclusion of a bitter and vigorous campaign that Belgium, aided by the US, waged in Congo in 1960 to ensure that Lumumba would never get a chance to rule the country that elected him to be its leader.
Because of the action of Belgium and the USA, we actually do not know whether Lumumba would have made a good ruler or not. Which makes him even more important to history: for he was not assassinated merely as a person, but as an idea. What was that idead?
It was the idea of a Congo that was fully independent, non-aligned, and committed to African unity.
Lumumba's party, the Mouvement National Congolais (MNC-L - L for Lumumba), was the only one in Congo to organise itself successfully as a party that saw the country as one and indivisible, not as a conglomeration of ethnic groups. Thus, it gained 33 out of the 137 seats in the Congolese Parliament.
From this relatively strong base, Lumumba was able to inspire others with his vision and thereby to hatch alliances that enabled the MNC to command an over-all majority of the seats in the parliament.
When he was appointed Prime Minister by Brussels, many of the Belgians in Congo and in Belgium itself thought the heavens had fallen in. For he was not the Belgians' first choice!
They tried other Congolese "leaders" (such as Joseph Kasavubu) and it was only when these failed to garner adequate support that they unwillingly called on Lumumba.
The magnitude of the achievement of the MNC in organising its elf as a nationwide party, and managing to hatch viable alliances is not often appreciated, because few people realise that Congo is as big in size as all the countries of Western Europe put together!
As for Belgium itself, it is outrageous that it should have wanted to run Congo in the first place - Congo is 905,563 square miles in size, compared to Belgium's puny 11,780 square miles.
In other words, Belgium arrogated to itself the task of ruling a country almost 77 times its size! Not only is Congo huge, but think of a country the size of Western Europe that does not have good roads, railway systems, telecom facilities or modern airports.
And a Western Europe in which political parties are legalised only one year before vital elections - say, elections to put into power the parties that would decide whether there should be a European Union at all, or not!
The only thing to add is that in Congo, the first nationwide local elections held in 1959, which saw the emergence of the MNC, were even more crucial, for it was those elections that were to assess the strength of the various "parties" (in effect, ethnic movements) that would take part in deciding the future constitutional arrangements under which the country would be governed.
Who knew - perhaps the independence that Ghana (1957) and Guinea (1958) had achieved, might even come Congo's way and those elected might become ministers, who would form the first government of a new, independent Congo, after nearly 100 years of the most brutal colonial rule inflicted on an African country by a European ruler.
By the time the Belgians felt the need to call a constitutional conference in Brussels to decide how the new Congo was to be ruled, Lumumba was in prison.
Again! He had earlier been imprisoned on a charge of embezzlement while he was a postal clerk. It needs to be pointed out that the charge was brought against him while he was away in Brussels, touring the country at the invitation of the Belgian government. Was someone trying to blight a future political career?
The charge on which he went to prison a second time was more in line with colonial practice. "Inciting a riot"!
Ha - where have we heard that before?
Those who know African history can immediately see the parallels with what happened in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi: it was precisely the same colonial criminal code that had put Nkrumah in prison in Ghana in 1950, and in a slightly more tortuous manner, Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya in 1953, and Kamuzu Banda in the then Nyasaland (Malawi) in 1959.
Again, like Nkrumah in Ghana, Lumumba's party, the MNC contested local (provincial) council elections in 1959 while its leader was still in jail, and surprise, surprise, it too won a sweeping victory, as the electorate made no mistake in recognising why the leader had been jailed. In its main stronghold of Stanleyville (today's Kisangani), Lumumba's party obtained no less than 90 percent of the votes.
So, when in January 1960, the Belgian government invited all the Congolese parties to a Round Table Conference in Brussels to discuss political change, i.e. write a new constitution for the country, and the MNC refused to participate unless Lumumba was released and put at its head, the Belgian government had no choice but to release him and fly him to Brussels.
It was at this conference that Lumumba showed his mettle - rising above the divisive politics that the Belgians wanted to promote among the various ethnic groupings and uniting them on one central objective - independence. And he managed to get a date agreed for independence - 30 June 1960.
Lumumba returned from Brussels to contest the national elections that were held in May 1960: a mere one-month to independence. I draw your attention again to the size of Congo and the absence of anything in the country that resembled adequate infrastructure.
This made it well-nigh impossible to campaign for elections on a national scale and of the 50 parties that put up candidates only two - Lumumba's MNC-L and the Parti National du Progrès or PNP - fielded candidates in provinces other than where their leaderships originated from.
Here is how the larger of the 50 parties performed in the May 1960 general election: MNC-L was strongest in Oriental Province (Eastern Congo).
It won nearly a quarter of the seats in the lower house of parliament (33 out of 137) - thus garnering the highest number of seats for any single party.
In the province of Léopoldville, the Parti Solidaire Africain or PSA (led by Antoine Gizenga) narrowly defeated the ABAKO party of Joseph Kasavubu.
In Katanga province, the Confederation des Associations Tribales de Katanga or CONAKAT, led by Moise Tshombe, won narrowly over its main rival, the Association Generale des Baluba du Katanga, or BALUBAKAT, led by Jason Sendwe.
In Kivu, the Centre de Regroupement Africain, CEREA of Anicet Kashamura, won but didn't obtain a majority.
MNC-L came second there. MNC-L also won in Kasai, despite being obliged to fight against a splinter faction that had become MNC-K (under the leadership of Albert Kalonji, Joseph Iléo and Cyrille Adoula).
In the Eastern province, the MNC-L won a clear majority over the PNP, its only major adversary.
Finally, in the province of Equateur, PUNA (led by Jean Bolikango) and UNIMO (led by Justin Bomboko) were the victors.
But, as stated above, it was not Lumumba who, based on his performance at the elections, was first called upon by the Belgians to try to form a government.
That honour went to the ABAKO leader Joseph Kasavubu.
He failed, and it was then that Lumumba was asked to form a government.
To the Belgians' surprise, Lumumba succeeded in doing so.
He clobbered together a coalition whose members were: UNC and COAKA (Kasai), CEREA (Kivu), PSA (Leopoldville) and BALUBAKAT (Katanga).
The parties in opposition to the coalition were PNP, MNC-K (Kasai), ABAKO (Leopoldville), CONAKAT (Katanga), PUNA and UNIMO (Equateur) and RECO (Kivu).
It was at this stage that Lumumba demonstrated how far-sighted he was.
He convinced his coalition partners that the opposition parties should not be ignored and he proposed that they should elect Joseph Kasavubu, the ABAKO leader, as President of the Republic. Lumumba's coalition partners agreed, and the deal was announced on 24 June, 1960.
But unfortunately, Lumumba signed his own death warrant in appointing Kasavubu out of the best of intentions. In doing so, he implanted a poisonous Belgians spy into his bosom.
Lumumba's action was acclaimed as an act of statesmanship and was endorsed by a vote of confidence in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.
However, the Belgians began to use what would have been Lumumba's political strengths against him.
They now cultivated Kasavubu, filling his head with sweet words about how Lumumba was young and inexperienced, whereas Kasavubu was experienced and sagacious, as recognised in Brussels.
He must not allow any "impulsive" acts of the young Prime Minister to go unchallenged.
And they backed their flattery with massive sums of money.
Even more important, the Belgians planted into the Office of the Prime Minister (Lumumba) as his principal aide, a former soldier called Joseph Mobutu.
He had been recruited as an agent by the Belgians, while attending the Exhibition of Brussels, following which he stayed on in Belgium as a student of "journalism".
With his military background, it would not have been difficult to teach him the tricks of espionage instead. - New African
Labels: BELGIUM, COLONIALISM, DRC, KWAME NKRUMAH, MOBUTU SESE SEKO, NEOCOLONIALISM, PATRICE LUMUMBA
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Nkrumah’s Ghana and Zimbabwe
by Nathaniel Manheru
06/11/2010 00:00:00
“IT has been said that the fabrication of the “big lie” is essential in the planning of any usurpation of political power. In the case of Ghana, the big lie told to the world was that Ghana needed to be rescued from “economic chaos”. Various other lies were hinged to this central lie. The country was said to be hopelessly in debt and the people on the verge of starvation.
“Among the lies aimed against me personally was the one that I had accumulated a large private fortune; this was to form the basis for an all-out character assassination attempt.
“But these lies were subsidiary to the one big lie of ‘economic mismanagement’, which was to provide an umbrella excuse for the seizure of power by neo-colonialist inspired traitors. Words of Robert Mugabe? Wrong.
Words of Kwame Nkrumah, slightly over a year after he is deposed from power in a Western-instigated coup on February 24, 1966.
President Nkrumah was on his way to Hanoi, Vietnam, when the coup took place.
President Ho Chi Minh had invited him and Nkrumah carried with him proposals for ending the war in that country which had been invaded by the United States in the name of stopping the spread of communism.
At the time of the coup, Nkrumah had reached Peking (now Beijing) and the burden of breaking the news to him fell on the Chinese Ambassador to Accra who had run ahead of him by way of preparations.
Coup d’etat
Nkrumah recreates that tense encounter in a book he would publish a few months later, while in Guinea-Conakry; a book simply titled “Dark Days in Ghana”.
Said the Chinese Ambassador: “Mr President, I have bad news. There has been a coup d’etat in Ghana.”
Replied the Osagyefo: “What did you say?”
Came back the ambassador: “A coup d’etat in Ghana.”
Shot back the pan-Africanist: “Impossible!”
A little later, came back the embattled president: “But yes, it is possible. These things do happen. They are in the nature of the revolutionary struggle.”
I will return soon . . .
A while later, Nkrumah would release a more considered statement to the Press and it read: “On my arrival in Peking, my attention has been drawn to reports from Press agencies which allege that some members of the Ghana armed forces supported by some members of the police have attempted to overthrow my government — the government of the Convention People’s Party.
“I know that the Ghanaian people are always loyal to me, the party and the government, and all I expect of everyone at this hour of trial is to remain calm, but firm in determination and resistance.
“Officers and men in the Ghana Armed Forces who are involved in this attempt, are ordered to return to their barracks and wait for my return.
“I am the constitutional head of the Republic of Ghana, and the supreme commander of the armed forces.
“I am returning to Ghana soon.”
He never returned to Ghana, at least in this life, right up to the end of his buffeted life.
The closest he got to his homeland was to some place called Conakry, in a country called Guinea, some 300km from Ghana.
Guinea was under President Sekou Toure, himself a firebrand pan-Africanist who believed in African liberation and continental unity as a principal weapon against imperialism.
Toure had been among the first African presidents to commiserate with Nkrumah.
He did more.
He invited Nkrumah to Guinea, pending the resolution of the political imbroglio imperialism had spawned for Ghana.
This was a euphemism for exile, but Nkrumah accepted the offer.
His calculation was to be near enough his homeland so he would be able to inspire resistance against the coup within Ghana itself.
Indeed, Toure gave Nkrumah many platforms, including access to radio so Nkrumah could make weekly broadcasts through which to inspire nationwide resistance to the coup.
Broadcasts were made to Ghana from Guinean soil.
But Ghana would not rise against the coup which grew more confident with each day it survived unchallenged.
Like Achebe’s Okonkwo, Nkrumah then knew “Umuofia” would not go to war.
In enemy hands
It would take many, many decades, decades well into the 21st century for Nkrumah to walk back home, back to the warmth of his people.
This was by way of a huge commemoration marking the life of Nkrumah under two years ago, a commemoration orchestrated by John Kufour, then President of Ghana, back then a deputy minister of Foreign Affairs under Kwame.
Alongside many other Ghanaian officials serving under Nkrumah, a good many of them brewed in the British colonial civil service pot — or single-mindedly materialistic — Kufour had quickly identified with the other Ghana to emerge from the coup.
More than 35 years later, he would re-emerge in Ghanaian politics as that country’s president, and as “near” history is beginning to reveal, with a little bit of assistance from a representative of Her Majesty’s Government, one Craig Murray, then accredited to Ghana as a British diplomat (see last week and this week’s issues of The Sunday Mail).
More fundamentally, Kufour was to re-emerge as the man to build the plinth or pedestal which Nkrumah deserved, will forever deserve.
I hope Tendai Biti is following this debate so he can properly situate his so-called generational politics. But that is a matter for another day.
My focus is on the role of lies and character assassination in contriving imperialism-serving regime change.
Cusp of opulence
Not far back, President Mugabe made the mistake of indicating that Zimbabwe will be going back to the polls soon.
What ordinarily would pass for a banal message, more banal even to a country and political ethos with such a surfeit of “democrats” claiming to fight for “change”, has turned out more chilling than the tundra.
The “movement” for our British-born democrats does not seem to relish elections at all.
What has not been coming through is whether they do not want elections this time, or at all.
DPM Mutambara, as usual evincing ungainly candour, gave us a glimpse of their psyche.
Did we think Chamisa or Biti are about to trade their cosseted lives as ministers of Government for an uncertain one sure to come with the turbulence of elections?
The “bhenzi”, the security aides, the power, the glory, and all else?
All to obey the tyranny of time whose irresponsible ticking makes the two years for which the GPA was meant to live and last, come sooner?
Is the GPA cast in stone? Is time better than the Sabbath which was meant for men (not women)? What’s in time? Who hath it?
The bitter benzi . . .
I liked the reaction from Mister Chamisa, mukuwasha!
Face surly and writhing from the agony of unwanted ministerial opulence, the political youngster shot back at the DPM, his senior in Government, his rivalled equal in politics: Did the robotics professor whose sun is sure to set in the next election think we enjoy being in Government, enjoy riding in bhenzis, enjoy the titles, the power, the privileges, the people we govern?
Did he? Does he think we fear elections? Does he?
Never before in history was power so disavowed, with such cumulative rhetorical intensity, delivered from such an untwisted, lie-fearing mouth as poured forth these blest words on that day!
It was a divine bleat from one so young and thus so innocent.
“Regai vavuye kwandiri nokuti vushe bwokudenga ndohwavakadai,” akadaro Tenzi achibwereketa paChikaranga!
Splitting the party
And yet, someone from within the belly of “the movement” was bitterly complaining, bellicose even.
I shall protect his name but publicly record his sentiments: “Some of us did not want this thing, chiInclusive Government and Tsvangirai forced us into it.
“Reluctantly we got in and with some of us once we were in, it was heart and soul.
“Now he tells us we have to get out. No, that could cause a crisis, a real split.”
What does Tsvangirai himself say? Nothing much different.
He likes it in the inclusive Government and has said so. What is worse, he rues the silly bluff he made, which President Mugabe has now called, much to his consternation.
“It was only play, dear colleague principal.”
He has tried to get Mutambara to mediate but his officials fear Mutambara will run with the mediation uphill and, once on top of the knoll, tell the village who dunnit!
Not an idle worry, if you ask me, but perhaps relatively minor, lighter, compared to what Tsvangirai wants stopped.
Bed of thorns
He made his bed — chose to make one from twigs of mubayamhondoro, not from the abundant soft green of verdant pastures — he must now lie on it.
And time is not on his side as Zanu-PF’s labyrinthine structures begin to crank themselves into irreversible motion.
Tsvangirai is both terrified and frustrated and in that state, he betrays valuable clues which I hope someone is correctly reading.
He fulminates that the life of GPA does not rest with the goodwill of Mugabe; it has to be negotiated.
Which is to say, Mr Prime Minister? Does he want a longer GPA?
Is that not the same point Mutambara made to mordant lampooning from the Prime Minister’s men?
Who is he threatening by that statement: the President, himself or elections? Does he intent to negotiate? With who? For what outcome(s)?
Surely, he cannot negotiate to have elections, which is what Mugabe wants? He can only negotiate for their deferment, which is what he needs, without appearing to want it!
What explains this tergiversation on the part of the MDC-T leader? Fundamentally, much rests with the state of the MDC-T itself. It no longer wants its “T”.
Or if it has to suffer the “T”, it wants a “B” added, to become MDC-TB.
I hope you figure out that one, dear reader.
Suffice to say the Prime Minister’s party is badly divided, with a fracture likely to tear it apart.
MDC-TB
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Ordinarily, the threat of a poll would have united it. Not this time, for all the efforts its owners (Europeans and Americans) are deploying.
The daunting prospects of looming elections, far from uniting MDC-T, has created another fissure for sniping at the leadership which comes across as un-strategic, out of touch and unable to match the “wiles” of Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF.
What is worse, the leadership is being divisive and inattentive to the larger picture, particularly defining issues around which to mount a credible election campaign.
Interestingly, the push for a leadership change in this movement — ironically for change — is being justified not around defining a new, electable agenda for the formation; rather it is being justified by the need to give the party a leader able to match Robert Mugabe.
And the Prime Minister does not help his case by making self-deprecatory remarks about his lack of grasp of legal issues which he thinks is outweighed by his firm grasp of common sense.
You do not make such remarks to an already sceptical audience which could very well retort: “Even that common sense, you lack too, Mr Leader.”
Besides, how do you confirm you lack legal skills without defeating your case for leadership, indeed without recommending those who have it, should they decide to challenge you?
I mean what common sense are you exhibiting when you tell people in Mabvuku that they are a lot better now, that they are no longer hungry as before? Who in Mabvuku is better now?
What magic wand has the inclusive Government waved to end the depredations of sanctions? What reaction are you courting from such an acutely socially burdened populace?
When Mwonzora wept
As MDC-T leaders were busy enduring the opulence of Government posts, the structures were either enervating or tearing apart from leadership-induced schisms.
Indeed Tsvangirai was told this in Highfield.
A good indicator is the result of Tsvangirai’s Herculean efforts at rousing his supporters for a rescheduled Copac.
He “bunked” Cabinet a few times in the past weeks, adulterated occasions meant to be governmental which he turned into party events, and yet was still unable to mobilise his supporters for a thunderous turnout at urban Copac meetings.
For a while Mangwana and Mwonzora shared a ride on the same car, until the bleak reality on the ground dominated by Zanu-PF became too much for Mwonzora who requested to retreat to his own car.
He wept. As did Zanu (PF) in 2008 . . .
Clearly, the ground has shifted and it could not be more inauspicious for MDC-T.
What I find astounding are the candid confessions from MDC-T high-ranking officials, even in the presence of rival Zanu-PF members.
They openly say that things are not well at all in their home; that division in their party is worse than anything Zanu-PF can ever visualise.
It is the talk one got from a riven Zanu-PF in the run-up to the March 2008 elections, a talk which the once bitten Zanu-PF shyly twice avoids.
Worried by chiefs?
Why would a party confident of commanding the polls panic at the view that chiefs would want the President to govern for life?
Does this matter to a party sure to win elections? Surely, the chiefs’ wish can inanely remain, confounded and shattered by the electoral result?
Then you have the frenzy in MDC-T’s “NGO” sector.
Apart from going all the way to South Africa to convince Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa, that Zimbabwe is not yet ready for elections, these FGOs (foreign governmental organisations), retreat to the plush Leopard Rock, all in the name of the poor, eat, eat and eat until all their bodily openings ache, at the end of which they release a lengthy statement whose contents are so familiar, so outworn, and so banal, to have deserved let alone justified the eating and sexing outing in the first place.
They talk about polarisation, Posa, Aippa, human rights, ZEC, police, the President, etc, etc and do so the way they have spoken about the same before.
There was real news though. At the end of the mighty “Vumba Declaration”, all signed and hey, 55 signatories, all but one representing NGOs spawned on our holy soil by verminous Europe and America.
I particularly like the naming tradition in this highly mutable sector.
One signing NGO is called “Achieve Your Goal Trust!” It is that simple: just add “Trust” at the end of a sentence — any sentence — and donor monies come pouring!
Another one, SAYWHAT. Real naming genius. You can have SAYWHAT, SAYWHERE, SAYWHEN, SAYHOW, SAYWHICH, SAYWHENCE, SAYFORTH, each forming into a teat oozing for your cormorant belly!
Fifty-five, all told, meaning we have to brace ourselves for at least 55 electoral judgments, before we bring in those of foreign observers!
Which takes me to my main point.
Researched lies
As I write, the World Bank is in the country and its message is that Zimbabwe has slipped to 157th position in its latest Doing Business Report.
IMF, the World Bank’s sibling, is also in the country and has also given a damning report on Zimbabwe.
Not to be outdone, one Samson Muradzikwa of Development Bank of Southern Africa tells us foreign investors are shying away from Zimbabwe because they “do not view the inclusive Government as a genuine power-sharing arrangement”.
And a picture of PM Tsvangirai is pasted on the story presumably to show who is not genuine or who does not have power!
In the same vein and in the same week, you have a UN agency called UNDP telling us “Zimbabwe is the worst place to live in”, presumably concluding this is why it must be invaded or treated under Chapter 7!
Expectedly, Minister Misihairabwi-Mushonga is furious and thinks we do not need UNDP research, let alone endorsement.
And just watch, more such damning reports will come, hard on the heels of one another.
Ray lecture
But you also have stunning output from the American Ambassador and his paranoid embassy, itself an uncharacteristic fortress in a country so peaceful, a country whose only threat comes from the West, including, ironically enough, the fortified United States of America.
Ambassador Charles Ray on Tuesday, November 2 gave a “public lecture” at Chinhoyi University of Technology, just a matter of a couple of kilometers from the scene of the seminal Chinhoyi Battle of 1966 which heralded the start of our armed liberation struggle against Rhodesian fascists, supported by the chrome-craving US government which Charles Ray serves today.
It helps to recall that the United Nations passed comprehensive sanctions against Rhodesia soon after the declaration of unilateral independence by the racists.
America refused to observe those sanctions, citing its defence needs by way of the strategic chrome mineral which it had to import from Rhodesia, or else from the Soviet Union, its bete noire.
The domestic and defence needs of the United States prevailed over the collective interests of more than seven million Africans of Rhodesia, then occupied, oppressed and discriminated against.
Let us see if America’s man here did better at Chinhoyi than he did recently at Heroes Acre, another important shrine.
His lecture was one elaborate flaunt of America’s electoral practices which he regards as too old and entrenched to be transplanted to other climes.
I grant him that, wondering though why a biological representative of a long oppressed race inside America itself, could possibly have glossed over the fact the government he represents here politically denied a vote to his kinsmen for the greater part of the 240 years of that democracy he so eloquently panegyrises.
Surely a genuine African Texan (if that makes sense at all) must know that?
Surely an African-American who is a sharer in that troubled history must say something about that.
Does not the experiences of his race, bitter experiences at that, require a more modest sales effort of American democracy, more so if the salesman of that democracy carries the injuries and scars of its failings? Or is this the compulsion of duty?
If it is, what then does that duty make him, especially so to us Africans in whose midst he now lives?
Confused by “sadza”
On a lighter note, he drew an analogy of “sadza” which he claims is better enjoyed at home than away! I hope he knows sadza and how it sits on the tongues of those that eat it.
Much worse I hope he understands its eaters: you and me. You invoke a local troupe, better make sure it’s apt, Mr Ambassador!
He thinks Zimbabwe’s democracy has strong roots but wilted foliage, blaming it all on its Government which cannot listen to its people.
“The problem, of course, is that Zimbabwe’s Government seems to have lost the habit of listening to people – all of Zimbabwe’s people,” he claimed.
His second major point: sanctions are “a fairy tale” of the un-listening Zimbabwe Government.
“I understand many of you are studying to be engineers. Perhaps one of you will be clever enough to invent a machine that will allow us to visit the imaginary place where all this (sanctions by the US) happened,” he challenged, obviously dramatising sure-footedness.
A sentence after that declaration, the ambassador said: “The truth of course, is that the United States blocks business transactions and visas for a little over 100 Zimbabwean leaders who have supported or participated in political violence against their fellow citizens.
“When leaders named on the US sanctions list (hee-e?) tell you that these limited and largely symbolic measures destroyed Zimbabwe’s economy, what they are really doing is pretending they are not responsible for a disastrous decade.
“They are saying, ‘I am not the one. I am not responsible!’”
Then he makes his last point, one adjunctive to the allegation of an un-listening Government.
Claiming that many Zimbabweans are working hard to get their Government to listen, he stresses: “This is vitally important work, and I think you will agree with me that this work must succeed before Zimbabwe has its next election.
For what is an election if not an opportunity for the Government to listen?”
The American envoy has, in other words, pronounced US position on proposed elections in Zimbabwe, following a referendum and its constitutional aftermath, which can only be known soon after.
Lady Hudson-Dean
The same day, US Embassy’s Sharon Hudson-Dean was issuing a statement no clearer than that of the ambassador.
“The US does not maintain sanctions against the people of Zimbabwe or the country of Zimbabwe.
“US sanctions target individuals and entities that have undermined democratic processes or institutions in Zimbabwe.”
Clearly the persons and entities targeted by US sanctions - which do not exist by the way – are not part of “the people of Zimbabwe”!
She goes further in that muddled fashion: “US sanctions – (which do not exist by the way!) – also targets entities owned or controlled by the Zimbabwean Government or officials of the Government.”
Please note, gentle reader, that entities belonging to the Government of Zimbabwe have nothing to do with the people of Zimbabwe, according to American diplomatiquespeak!
A little further down, the diplomat’s pen simply disintegrates: “The US Treasury updates targeted sanctions related to Zimbabwe by adding individuals or entities to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List as new individuals or companies emerge, or are identified, who meet the criteria for designation, and by removing individuals or entities from the list when they no longer meet the criteria for designation.”
I shall not comment except to say that this very active sanctions policy takes too long to realise that the dead cannot live in permanent sin way past their capacity to act and react in this life where America is such a willful superpower!
She migrates to US and IFIs: “US is not preventing Zimbabwe’s access to international financial assistance.
“The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, signed into law in 2001 (she says so with absolutely no sense of awkwardness), and provisions contained in subsequent appropriations acts, restrict the ability of the US to vote in support of new assistance to Zimbabwe from international financial institutions (IFIs), except for programmes that meet basic human needs or promote democracy.
“Zimbabwe was already ineligible for multilateral loans before this law was passed due to its arrears to the international financial institutions.”
She goes on and on, her argument thinning to the threadbare with each comma.
Zero interference
Even more interesting is the fact that the American Ambassador is so anxious that his government’s “message” on sanctions hits home unimpeded, that he responded robustly yesterday to the way The Herald reported his lecture, a report whose “tenor and opening” he did not like.
The US had no policy of interfering in Zimbabwe whose fate belongs to its people!
And creating a whole law for a sovereign country so far away from American subcontinent, with a view to ensuring that policies of that sovereign country stop posing “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States”, is not interfering! No, it’s not!
Let me swiftly retire the ambassador and his poorly-trained communication minion by making one or two poignant points, based on American activities.
Do the Ambassador and his minions know of a Bill (S.3297.IS) titled “Zimbabwe Transition to Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2010”, piloted by the same men who pushed through ZDERA, people like Feingold?
Do the Ambassador and his staff know of another bill (S.3722.IS) titled “Zimbabwe Sanctions Repeal Act of 2010” drafted by senior members of the US legislature, in fact the same persons responsible for ZDERA, to try and attenuate sanctions against Zimbabwe?
That particular draft talks about “imposing sanctions on the Mugabe regime and members of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front,” openly admitting that “the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 (is) burdening the power-sharing Government in Zimbabwe (and thus) must be repealed.”
Of course both bills came to grief as the ambassador himself predicted, although without making us aware at the time that he himself would be part of the lobby against their success.
For how else is one to read the communication from his mission quoted above? But that is not my point.
My point is if the American Ambassador and his staff regard their Congressmen responsible for these two initiatives to remove sanctions as employees of the Zimbabwe Government with an interest in widening the sanctions “fairy tale”.
I go a little further.
Does the Ambassador know that Zimbabwe, with its comparatively small foreign debt did not stop being creditworthy on account of its asset base and therefore its ability to pay, indeed that the assessment had absolutely nothing to do with its ledger?
The year 2001, which is when Zimbabwe was declared ineligible for loans from IFIs, came hard on the heels (as it should numerically) of the 1998 Donor Conference which heralded the collapse of multilateral intervention in her land reform project, but also of her operations in the Congo in defence of a legitimate government which had been threatened by an American-inspired invasion by Rwanda and Uganda.
Does the ambassador know that this defence of the Congo against an American willed invasion, plus the land reform programme and the property relations it implied in fact are what his government cites as “the unusual and extraordinary threat” to its policy on the subcontinent?
Indeed that these two considerations proved stronger that Zimbabwe’s ledger, in determining her creditworthiness?
More indebted countries with smaller economies and less natural resources got bigger loans and relief from the same IFIs than little Zimbabwe which dared stop a second Lumumba from falling, much as they could not, unfortunately, save him from dying.
Tough strictures
Besides, granting that Zimbabwe could no longer draw resources from IFIs, for whatever reason one pleases to advance, does America’s Harare mission read carefully the wording of ZDERA on the matter?
It reads:
“Until the President makes the certification described in Sub-Section (d), and except as may be required to meet basic human needs or for good governance, the Secretary of the Treasury shall instruct the United States executive director to each international financial institution to oppose and vote against:
(1) any extension by the respective institutions of any loan, credit, or guarantee to the Government of Zimbabwe; or
(2) any cancellation or reduction of indebtedness owed by the Government of Zimbabwe to the United States or any international financial institution.”
If Zimbabwe was so heavily indebted – which it was not – Zimbabwe still had an option to negotiate a loan reschedule which is permissible and provided for by the IFIs.
This is what Sub-Section (2) quoted above was crafted to preempt.
Basic human needs according to the UN include life, food, shelter, education, clean water, etc, etc, all those things governments are elected and do borrow to deliver.
What is exactly meant by the US strictures?
And where meeting these basic needs is reposed in NGOs inspired by the same sanctioning governments, that is still not interference?
Above all, why place legal strictures against a Government you are convinced is no longer eligible for loans?
The idea was to close all loopholes in order to ensure Zimbabwe would not get any services arising from its membership of these IFIs.
My last point on this matter is to wonder whether the US Ambassador knows that Chinhoyi University of Technology was built by the same un-listening Government at the height of US and European sanctions? For what?
So the American Ambassador could find a platform for telling us we have no US sanctions biting us, only an un-listening Government which destroyed Zimbabwe’s economy in the last decade?
And when Finance Minister Biti, himself a lawyer within the sanctions-seeking MDC with which the US Government collaborated to create ZDERA, tells us sanctions are real and do exist, what do the ambassador and his minions say?
It does provide a glimpse into who shapes Tsvangirai’s mind on this one matter.
But I am happy it is becoming patently difficult for Americans to muster a clever argument in hiding or defending their sanctions here.
How does all this tie up with the Nkrumah quote I opened with? ZDERA opens with a charge of “economic mismanagement” against the Zimbabwe Government, while the Executive Orders accuse Government of all manner of offences, including causing “economic instability”.
And of course the decade of land reforms was a decade of copious reports laying all sorts of charges against the Zimbabwean authorities, principally that of economic mismanagement and political repression.
With the announcement of possible elections, we are back to the same template, and the victim shall once more be blamed for the disability.
This is what the freshest reports I have quoted above, which can only increase as we move towards elections are aimed at.
Except the situation is slightly more complicated for imperialism than existed in Ghana of the 1960s.
Catch-22!
Thanks to the inclusive Government, any negative report on Zimbabwe damns the inclusive Government.
That means Zanu-PF and both MDC formations.
You cannot condemn the Zimbabwe Government as un-listening without doubting Mugabe and Tsvangirai’s ears alike.
You cannot doubt the power-sharing agreement without damning those you think wield the real power and those pretending to have it.
You cannot condemn Zimbabwe as an investment destination without damning claims that the MDC formations have restored “functionality to Government”, as Chamisa is wont to claim.
Above all, Zimbabwe cannot be the worst place to live without at the same time having the worst Government to rule!
That means the three political parties are not fit to govern.
They are not electable in other words, meaning the electable ones have to come from another planet, possibly one called United States of America!
Icho!
Labels: KWAME NKRUMAH, NEOCOLONIALISM, PROPAGANDA, ZDERA
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The Africans won the War
by Mzilikazi Ndlovu
20/10/2009 00:00:00
WORLD War II was a great turning point in the history of modern Africa. Before the war broke out, the pace of de-colonisation since the establishment of colonial rule in the nineteenth century had been slow. Throughout Africa, the colonial regimes seemed too formidable for any opposition to challenge.
In 1939, the whole of Africa was under foreign rule. The Italians were occupying Ethiopia, British troops remained in Egypt, an American corporation -- Firestone Company -- controlled Liberia, and the Union of South Africa was a Dominion within the British Commonwealth.
By this time, every colonial territory had a military force adequate to control disobedient subjects. From Cape to Cairo, colonial rule had a firm grip.
Europeans recruited Africans into their armies as well. Over 100,000 African troops were sent to Europe (Italy in 1943 and later to France following the fall of the Vichy regime) and Britain enlisted about 200,000 African soldiers, many of whom served in Burma.
Most of these African soldiers had never been out of their native countries before. During active service, despite dangers and hardships, they were relatively well paid and most of them learnt to read newspapers, listened to the wireless bulletins, and took interest in world affairs. Perhaps more importantly, by fighting in these armies they learned something about how Europeans thought.
The attitudes of Europeans and Africans towards each other were greatly changed as a result of the war. Before the war, Europeans had been able to dominate Africans not only because of their more advanced economic system, but because the Europeans were certain that they were both invincible and superior to Africans.
Most Africans believed this to be true. However, the war shattered this myth for good. Several former colonial powers had been defeated and publicly humiliated. The British, French and Dutch empires had collapsed before the Japanese onslaught like straw huts in a storm. The Italian Empire had been defeated in Ethiopia. Later, as the tide of war changed, the Germans – themselves once a powerhouse in South West Africa – showed that they were not invincible.
In combat, African soldiers saw another side of the whites they had never seen before. Africans witnessed the civilized, sophisticated, and orderly white people mercilessly butchering one another just as their own so-called savage ancestors had done in tribal wars. The Africans perceived no difference between the so-called “primitive” and so-called “civilized men.”
In short, they saw through European pretensions that Africans were savages unable to control their own destinies. This discovery had a revolutionary impact on the African mind. The camaraderie between European and African soldiers became stronger. The relationship between the two groups of soldiers differed from that of European colonial officers and traders and African subjects: Europeans no longer appeared to be lofty, superior beings but instead were similar to the ordinary African citizen.
African soldiers saw white soldiers wounded, dying, and dead. The bullet had the same effect on black and white skin alike. After spending four years hunting other (white) soldiers, Africans never again regarded them as gods.
Through the war, the Allied Powers taught their subject peoples that it was not right for Germany to dominate other nations. They taught the subject peoples to fight and die for freedom, rather than live and be subjugated by Adolf Hitler. The subject peoples learned the lesson well and responded magnificently: they fought, endured great hardships, and died under the magic spell of “freedom.”
British officers appealed to the Africans to join the armed services, and they began extensive propaganda against the Nazis. (Not just the British, of course – practically all the Allied Powers did the same thing). But the “subject peoples” did begin to ask questions.
The following dialogue spells out the attitude of the African and other subject peoples:
‘Away with Hitler! Down with him!’ said the British officer.
‘What’s wrong with Hitler?’ asked the African.
‘He wants to rule the whole world,’ said the British officer.
‘What is wrong with that?’
‘ He’s German, you see,’ said the British officer, trying to appeal subtly to the African’s tribal consciousness.
‘What’s wrong with his being German?’
‘You see,’ began the British officer, trying to explain it in terms that would be conceivable to the African mind, ‘it is not good for one tribe to rule another. Each tribe must rule itself. That’s only fair. A German must rule Germans, an Italian, Italians and a Frenchman, French people.’
Note here that the astute British officer did not say ‘and a Brit must rule the British.’ However, what the British said nevertheless carried weight with the Africans who rallied by the thousands under the British flag. They joined the war to end the threat of Nazi domination.
Yet, after World War II, Africans began to direct their British-inspired spirit of freedom against the Allied Powers who had extensive colonial empires in Africa.
Throughout the continent, anti-colonial movements formed. “You said it was wrong for the Germans to rule the world. It is also wrong for both the English and the French to rule Africans. It is wrong for the Portuguese to rule Africans.” Thus African freedom -seekers, hungry for independence, began to articulate their innermost longings and yearnings.
The fundamental lesson that Africans learned during the war was that they fought and suffered to preserve the freedom they did not have back home. They had a collective realisation that the freedom for which so many Africans had died abroad was only enjoyed by the whites that ruled Africa and Africans.
What was the difference between Hitler and the white man who denied Africans freedom on their native land? Why should Africans be used as the instruments of white people to achieve white freedom? When were the Africans going to be free in the land of their birth? And how could that freedom be achieved?
After the war, in 1947, Britain finally ceded independence to India. The subcontinent was partitioned between India and Pakistan, which became independent states within the Commonwealth. The same thing happened with Ceylon, and, upon becoming independent, Burma did not even join the Commonwealth.
Both African soldiers and African nationals who were studying in Europe and America watched and listened carefully as Britain lost its hold on the Far East.
In 1941, before America was drawn into the war, Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met on a battleship off the Canadian coast and signed the Atlantic Charter as a statement of their hope for the future of humankind. Afterward, they declared that they would “respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live, and that they wished to see “sovereign right and self-government restored to those who had been deprived of them.”
To both the African soldiers and nationalists, this Atlantic Charter became a great source of inspiration.
The European giants, Britain and France, came out of the war looking poorer and weaker; the USA and USSR became super-powers. Neither had an interest in strengthening the British and French colonial systems, and both had an interest in weakening British and French rule so as to expand their own trade and spheres of influence.
The colonised Africans, soldiers, nationalists and peasants all began to demand their independence. Immediately after the war, African nationalist leaders such as Albert Luthuli, Joshua M. Nkomo, Kwame Nkrumah, and Jomo Kenyatta arose and began to shout “Africa for the Africans – if freedom is good for the Europeans it must be equally good for Africans!”
In 1945, a Nigerian serviceman wrote from India to the prominent nationalist leader Herbert McAulay:
“We all overseas soldiers are coming back home with new ideas. We have been told what we fought for. That’s ‘freedom.’ In Africa we want freedom, nothing but freedom.”
At the same time, a poet from the Gold Coast had published a satirical poem in a local newspaper, The African Morning Post. The poem was a parody of Psalms 23:
“The European merchant is my shepherd, and I am in want. He made me to lie down in cocoa farms. He led me beside the waters of great need. The general managers and profiteers frighten me. Thou prepared a reduction in my salary. In the presence of my creditors thou anoint my income with taxes. My expense runs over my income and I will dwell in a rented house forever.”
Across the continent African nationalism became uncontrollable, and it became obvious that the colonial days were numbered in Africa. But those who had to achieve their independence by the barrel of the gun had to turn to the USA, the former USSR and China for military assistance. These three powerhouses of the day were interested in creating their spheres of influence in Africa and naturally they gave African leaders huge amounts of money to fight off colonialists.
In 1957, Ghana gained its independence under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah, and other nations soon followed.
It is clear that without the catalyst of World War II, African independence would have been long delayed. Out of the war’s great evil came at least this one good – African Independence. Therefore, the Africans won the War!
Mzilikazi Ndlovu is a broadcaster and hosts Your World & Mine on CKJS 810 AM from Egypt. The program showcases the best of African and World music. You can listen to his programme at: www.ckjs.com
Labels: COLONIALISM, KWAME NKRUMAH
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KK urges Africans to emulate Nkrumah
Written by Ernest Chanda and Kabanda Chulu
Wednesday, September 23, 2009 4:29:13 AM
FIRST Republican president Dr Kenneth Kaunda has called on Africans to emulate first Ghanian president Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan Africanist spirit in order to face the current challenges on the continent.
Officiating on Monday at the centenary celebration of Nkruma’s life in Lusaka organised by the Press Freedom Committee of The Post, Dr Kaunda said
Africa would not have been politically free without Nkrumah’s fighting spirit.
“I met Kwame Nkrumah when I was quite young, and some of you may not know that it was from Nkrumah that we got many songs. Later on these songs were meant to unite Zambia; one of them being the ‘Tiyende pamodzi ndi mtima umo’ song. And these songs helped us in our fight to help liberate fellow Africans in Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique and South Africa, among others,” Dr Kaunda said.
“Now is the time to use our strength to fight current challenges as Nkrumah did in his time. His fearlessness and commitment to freedom inspired many of us. Without Kwame Nkrumah, Africa’s political independence could have taken long. He saw a people of one human family. No wonder after Ghana got its independence he did not sit down, but he said ‘Ghana will not be completely free until the whole of Africa is free’. That is why the 1966 coup in Ghana was a set back to the world.”
And Ghanian Consular in Zambia Charles Baah said Nkrumah had left a bold footprint on the sands of time.
“As we celebrate his centenary anniversary today, 21st September, 2009, may I draw your attention to the fact that Ghana’s first president, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah leaves a bold footprint on the sands of time. His life is a cocktail of myth, vision, selflessness, hard work and ambition. Seven times he escaped assassination attempts; three times he is buried – once abroad and twice in Ghana; many times his effigy is burnt to ashes,” Consular Baah said.
“For many years he is mocked and scorned by the very people he liberated from oppression and colonial bondage and for a long time his books and everything about him are ordered for destruction by his detractors in an attempt to wipe out his memory, at least from Ghanian history. But he survived and remains the most celebrated person ever to grace the soils of Ghana and Africa. Ghana’s independence, according to Nkrumah, was not an end to the fight against colonialism, but the beginning of the emancipation of Africa from foreign domination.”
And former Zambian Ambassador to Libya Mbita Chitala has said Africans must unite or continue living in abject poverty.
“His dreams and vision were for Africans’ benefit through political and economic independence and Africans must unite or continue living in abject poverty and as we struggle Nkrumah’s dream is still alive and should be fulfilled since most of us we yearn for this dream and vision to come true,” Ambassador Chitala said.
“And those who hate Africans will continue fighting for the attainment of this dream but we should persevere and unite to become a single and strong block like the European Union, otherwise we shall continue being poor and underdeveloped.”
Meanwhile, Third World Network Africa Coordinator Yao Graham has challenged the current African leadership to draw lessons from the vision of the late Kwame Nkrumah.
Graham, who is based in Accra, Ghana, said there were many lessons to learn from the Nkrumah legacy.
“While many African leaders have aspired to inherit Nkrumah’s mantle as the visionary and driver of Pan Africanism and continental unity, a gaping political leadership vacuum remains at the heart of the continent’s collective expression. Nkrumah’s life and work was dominated by pan Africanism as a pro ject of political and economic freedom, unity and structural transformation linked to issues of Africa’s voice on the world stage; and this is what the African leadership should learn form from,’ Graham said.
“It is understood that Nkrumah’s leadership and rallying role in African affairs went well beyond his vision of Africa must unite. Importantly it included support for national liberation movements, hence encompassing a strong commitment to anti colonial independence sentiments.”
Labels: KENNETH KAUNDA, KWAME NKRUMAH
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Africa Freedom Day
By Editor
Sunday May 25, 2008 [04:00]
On this day, Africa Freedom Day, we remember what Kwame Nkrumah once said: “Seek ye first the political kingdom, and everything else will be added unto ye.” We also remember the speech by that internationalist par excellence Dr Enersto Che Guevara at the Second Economic Seminar of the Organisation of Afro-Asian Solidarity in Algiers on February 26, 1965:
“Each time a country is freed, we say, it is a defeat for the world imperialist system, but we must agree that liberation, or the breaking away from the imperialist system is not achieved by the mere act of proclaiming independence or winning an armed victory in a revolution. Freedom is achieved when imperialist economic domination over a people is brought to an end.”
For centuries, our continent has bled from many gaping sword wounds. No doubt our renaissance is at hand - and our challenge is to steer the continent through the tide of history.
The people of our continent are eager and willing to be among the very best in all areas of human endeavour.
The peoples of the resurgent Africa are perfectly capable of deciding their own future form of government and discovering for themselves ways of dealing with any dangers which might arise.
We need to exert ourselves that much more, and break out of the vicious circle of dependence imposed on us by the financially powerful; those in command of immense market power and those who dare to fashion the world in their own image.
Africa, more than any other continent, has had to contend with the consequences of conquest in a denial of its own role in history, including denial that its people had the capacity to bring about change and progress.
It would be a cruel irony of history if Africa’s actions to regenerate the continent were to unleash a new scramble for Africa which, like that of the nineteenth century, plundered the continent’s wealth and left it once more the poorer.
Conflict threatens not only the gains we have made but also our collective future.
The African rebirth is now more than an idea – its seeds are being sown in the regional communities we are busy building, and in the continent as a whole.
Can we continue to tolerate our ancestors being shown as people locked in time?
Africa yearns and deserves to redeem her glory, to reassert her centuries-old contribution to economics, politics, culture and the arts; and once more to be a pioneer in the many fields of human endeavour.
One destabilising conflict anywhere on the continent is one too many.
For as long as the majority of the people anywhere on the continent feel oppressed, are not allowed democratic participation in decision-making processes, and cannot elect their own leaders in free and fair elections, there will always be tension and conflict.
A continent which, while it led in every evolution of human life and was a leading centre of learning, technology and the arts in ancient times, has experienced various traumatic epochs, each one of which has pushed her peoples into poverty and backwardness.
We cannot abuse the concept of national sovereignty to deny the rest of the continent the right and duty to intervene when, behind those sovereign boundaries, people are being slaughtered to protect tyranny.
We should treat the question of peace and stability on our continent as a common challenge.
As we dream and work for the regeneration of our continent, we should remain conscious that the African renaissance can only succeed as part of the development of a new and equitable world order in which all the formerly colonised and marginalised take their rightful place; makers of history rather than the possessions of others.
As we stand on the threshold of a new African era characterised by democracy, sustainable economic development and a reawakening of our rich cultural values and heritage, African unity should remain our watchword and the African Union our guide.
Let us teach our children that Africans are not one iota inferior to Europeans, Americans or Asians.
The lack of human dignity experienced by Africans is the direct result of the policy of white supremacy.
All of us, descendants of Africa, know only too well that racism demeans the victims and dehumanises its perpetrators.
And as we go about various duties and assignments, let us not forget what Chinua Achebe wrote in A Man of the People (1967): ‘A man who has just come in from the rain and dried his body and put on dry clothes is more reluctant to go out again than another who has been indoors all the time. The trouble with our new nation…was that none of us had been indoors long enough to be able to say ‘to hell with it’. We had all been in the rain together until yesterday. Then a handful of us - the smart and the lucky and hardly ever the best – hard scrambled for the one shelter our former rulers left, and had taken it over and barricaded themselves in. And from within they sought to persuade the rest through numerous loud speakers, that the first phase of the struggle had been won and that the next phase – the extension of our house – was even more important and called for new and original tactics; it required that all argument should cease and the whole people should speak with one voice…’
But let us not forget also what Saint Just said: “He who makes a revolution by half digs his own grave.”
Lastly, let’s get rid of impotent thinking from our minds. We shouldn’t pin our hopes for progress on the kindness, benevolence or sensibleness of our former colonisers, or imperialism and its lackeys. We will only triumph by strengthening our unity and persevering in our struggle.
There is no revolution that ever comes to an end.
Labels: AFRICA FREEDOM DAY, KWAME NKRUMAH
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Zim: A liberated zone in every respect
By Netfa Freeman
IF Kwame Nkrumah were still able, how would this revolutionary Pan-Africanist classify Zimbabwe today? According to Nkrumah’s very instructive Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare Africa can be broken down into three zones distinguished by certain political states of affairs.
This is commonly known as his Three Zone Theory or Three Zone Analysis, with the three being "liberated zones", "contested zones", and "enemy controlled zones".
So, is Zimbabwe a contested or liberated zone? This question arises regarding Zimbabwe because of the assertion by some that it is a liberated area or zone and because others still doubt this. So then, a critical examination becomes necessary.
It should be apparent that Zimbabwe is not an enemy controlled zone since that is defined as a state under imperialist control through a foreign manned administration, a puppet government, or a settler minority government.
Since such is what determines an enemy controlled zone, Zimbabwe cannot fit that description and if it did, it would not be under such heavy attack by the West.
Because the complexity of Africa’s politico-economic situation has changed considerably since the time Nkrumah formulated these classifications, it becomes necessary to refine how we further apply the analysis.
A closer examination reveals the following: A contested zone is defined as an area that starts under enemy control then becomes contested when "the revolutionary forces in activity there, are either on the verge of armed struggle or have reached an advanced stage of revolutionary organisation.
"In such a situation the enemy is only in superficial command and relies exclusively on support of the police, civil service and the army, where it retains control only as long as the force of habit remains unchallenged."
Zimbabwe is clearly beyond this stage since the forces of the liberation struggle have already rid the people of what was settler minority rule and now, the liberation forces themselves have control over the police, civil service and the army.
The Government of the liberation forces is recognised internationally as a sovereign nation.
To call Zimbabwe contested is to legitimise as "revolutionary" the forces of neo-colonialism, who are openly and shamelessly supported and encouraged by imperialism that is, the Movement for Democratic Change, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, and a plague of NGO’s or "non-governmental organisations", etc. all of which work to blur the lines between individual versus social/collective rights through their opposition to the Government and which mirror the imperialist agenda against Zimbabwe.
Some would maintain, however, that because Zimbabwe’s economy is still dominated internally and externally by capitalism, this classifies it as contested at best.
It is true that major industries and enterprises, such as mining, hotels, etc are still predominantly capitalist owned and controlled; a legacy of settler colonialism.
Hopefully this fact will be short-lived and we can see the first concrete steps toward state seizure of mining since independence.
Such things cannot happen overnight but this past November, the Government did release a 60-page draft proposal for amendments that strip foreign control of mining and give control over key mines to the state.
Regardless, nowhere does Nkrumah’s
analysis suggest that an area must have completely rid itself of all vestiges of capitalism and/or have in place a socialist economy in order to graduate from contested to liberated status.
Furthermore, is such a scenario even possible today with the global economy now more intricately integrated and with neo-colonialism so firmly entrenched on the continent?
Nkrumahist-Tureist ideology — named in honour of the theoretical and practical contributions of Presidents Osageyfo Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Sekou Ture — holds that political independence is one of the preconditions for socialist revolution and that by definition socialism is still a class stratified-society, which will have varying and particular manifestations of capitalism.
As Nkrumah once said, "Seek ye first the political kingdom."
Politics means a disposition of power, which is what allows a people to control their economy.
Some changes that have occurred in Africa’s politico-economic situation are relevant to understand capitalism’s continued dominance over Zimbabwe.
First, at the time when Nkrumah formulated the three-zone analysis a strong socialist block existed, offering an alternative with which to trade and collaborate.
In addition, the call for socialism enjoyed a much greater and broader affinity among the African masses and in the Diaspora.
Neither of these conditions exists today. In addition, Africa as a whole has deviated from her revolutionary path towards political and economic integration or continental unity, which Nkrumah foresaw as necessary to overcome her dependence on capitalism and the West.
Lastly, the West’s pressure on African nations to subscribe to multi-party systems, so-calling them "greater expressions of democracy", is used to polarise the people, as what it is really meant to do.
Nkrumah warned us of this phenomenon. In such parliamentary governments, multiple parties including reactionary ones serving neo-colonial interest, can hold seats and influence policy. Unfortunately Zimbabwe has been no exception.
Although Zanu-PF, Zimbabwe’s ruling party did not originally have the objective of sharing power with other parties this was one of the compromises of the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement that brokered Zimbabwe’s independence and has been used to preserve settler privilege and manufacture alternative poles of attraction.
It may be unknown or disputed, but since its inception there has always been the struggle internal to Zanu-PF to further the cause of socialism. History reveals that the fast track land reclamation process was not the first step in breaking capitalist control in Zimbabwe.
Adopted at the Second People’s Congress in August 1984 was the Leadership Code, which was established to "impose on (Zanu-PF)
leaders a strict code of behaviour with a view to assuring the advent of socialism in Zimbabwe".
The preamble of this code and the Zanu-PF constitution declare Zanu-PF a "Socialist Party". A detailed account and critical analysis of Zimbabwe’s history has to be made to explain the set backs and challenges along its revolutionary path and why capitalism still dominates the economy today.
What must also be taken into consideration is the evolving complexity of the global economy and imperialism, as it resists and adapts to oppressed people’s struggle for justice.
The question is; should not Zimbabwe be defined by including the objectives of its ruling party, Zanu-PF or merely by the situation in which the current circumstances confine them and the rest of world? When compared with Nkrumah’s description of a liberated area, we see that it is not a stretch to say Zimbabwe stands the test of scrutiny.
Liberated zones are defined "as territories where: [a.] Independence was secured through armed struggle, or through a positive
action movement representing the majority of the population under the leadership of an anti-imperialist and well-organised mass party.
[b.] A puppet regime was overthrown by a people’s movement (Zanzibar, Congo-Brazzaville, Egypt), and [c.] A social revolution is taking place to consolidate political independence by: 1). Prompting accelerated economic development 2). Improving working conditions 3). Establishing complete freedom from dependence on foreign economic interest."
While Zimbabwe clearly conforms to item (a.) and item (b.) does not apply, item (c.) needs more critical examination. A social revolution has been taking place in Zimbabwe that started with accelerated economic development during the first decade of independence.
According to Deborah Pott’s Structural Adjustment and Poverty: Perceptions
from Zimbabwe, the economy enjoyed an average annual growth rate of 4 percent with reputable achievements in public health and education.
This occurred while cutting its debt-service ratio in half between 1985 and 1989. Only the World Bank’s Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes taken on in 1991 that began Zimbabwe’s plunge into its current economic challenges interrupted these achievements.
Surely, the working conditions since independence were a marked improvement over those of Rhodesian settler colonial apartheid. Zimbabwe has not, however, established complete freedom from dependence on foreign economic interest.
"Complete freedom" from foreign economic interest is difficult to determine and seems it may be impossible until a more revolutionary unity exists in Africa as a whole.
It can be said that Zimbabwe is in the process toward this freedom with its Land reclamation programme, the 2000 abolition of the ESAP (a fact for which the Government rarely gets credit, but is often condemned by so-called progressives for the mistake of adopting the ESAP) and we should not forget the aforementioned developments in the mining industry.
These are things for which all African people should be proud of Zimbabwe and surely more such bold measures against capitalism and imperialism are inevitable there.
Things are undeniably not as they should be in Zimbabwe. What’s more, the difficulties entrenched on the continent of Africa as a whole do not help the situation.
However, all things considered, Zimbabwe seems to have earned Nkrumah’s designation of a Liberated Zone and as such deserves the support and encouragement of all genuine revolutionary Pan-Africanists.
l Netfa Freeman is the director of the Social Action & Leadership School for Activists at the Institute for Policy Studies. Freeman is a longtime activist in the Pan-African and international human rights movements. Netfa is also a co-producer/co-host for Voices With Vision, WPFW 89.3 FM, Washington DC. He can be reached at netfa@hotsalsa.org. This article was first published on www.blackstarnews. com.
Labels: CHIMURENGA, KWAME NKRUMAH
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