Zimbabwe President Talks With Senegalese Counterpart Over Continuing Row With Uk

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By Itai Musengeyi
Zimbabwe Herald

SENEGALESE President Abdoulaye Wade yesterday proposed a committee of
five African leaders to mediate over strained relations between Zimbabwe
and Britain.

Speaking to journalists at State House in Harare after holding talks
with President Mugabe, Mr Wade said one of the five leaders should be
South African President Thabo Mbeki.

Mr Mbeki is already brokering talks between Government and the
opposition MDC after being mandated by Sadc in March this year.

Significant progress has been made in the talks and President Mbeki was
in Harare last week to brief President Mugabe and MDC faction leaders
Professor Arthur Mutambara and Mr Morgan Tsvangirai on how the dialogue
was progressing.

"I come to Zimbabwe to meet my brother (President) Mugabe because I
think that in Africa we should help each other. You know that this
country has some problems with the British and I think all African
countries should help Zimbabwe.

"I think the problem should be an African problem and involve all
African countries," said Mr Wade.

He, however, said President Mbeki had done a commendable job in trying
to resolve the Zimbabwean issue but should not be left to shoulder the
responsibility alone.

The Senegalese leader said he was glad Zanu-PF and the MDC were engaged
in dialogue and had co-sponsored Constitutional Amendment Number 18 in
Parliament in preparation for next year’s elections.

"I am happy to know that they (Zanu-PF and MDC) are discussing. I am
very happy, I can only encourage them," said Mr Wade, adding that he
wished to meet the MDC.

Mr Wade stressed that the visit was his own initiative, but indicated
that he had been in touch with the British ambassador to Senegal over
the differences between London and Harare and that he would be phoning
Whitehall authorities either "today or tomorrow" about his visit to
Zimbabwe.

"Let me say that I was not sent by anybody (or) any country. I am just
an African friend. We wish that the African Union sets up a committee of
five among which (President) Mbeki should be involved in the mediation
between Britain and Zimbabwe. We Africans must be the facilitators. My
concern is to involve African states without negating the goodwill done
so far."

Mr Wade said the visit gave him an opportunity to understand the
situation in Zimbabwe.

He said some describe the state of affairs as catastrophic but he
observed that the situation was just like in any other African country
with similar problems such as power cuts, which Senegal also
experiences.

Also responding to questions from journalists, President Mugabe said Mr
Wade’s initiative was welcome but that it was unfortunate the visit was
short because Government would have facilitated for him to meet the
different groups of Zimbabwean society and visit places to understand
the country.

"He is an African brother. It’s a family issue, he is very welcome. I
would have rather received him over a longer stay so that we could show
him a bit of the country," said Cde Mugabe.

He said Mr Wade wanted to be informed about Zimbabwe and he had done
that during their talks, which lasted about two hours.

Cde Mugabe said he chronicled Zimbabwe’s history, part of which Mr Wade
already knew.

"Where we differ with the British, I told him. We don’t fear talking to
the British, but it is the other side that fears talking to us. We don’t
know how they want to resolve the problem if there is no dialogue. With
(former British prime minister) Margaret Thatcher, ideologically we were
never one, but we talked," said President Mugabe.

Mr Wade and his delegation flew in yesterday morning for a two-day
official visit and were met at Harare International Airport by President
Mugabe, ministers, diplomats, service chiefs and senior Government
officials.

Last night President Mugabe hosted a dinner for Mr Wade at the Rainbow
Towers.

Today the Senegalese leader is expected to visit the National Heroes
Acre before he returns home.


West sworn to rule of force

By Reason Wafawarova in Sydney, Australia

SINCE the United States took over global imperial dominance from Britain
at the end of World War II, the then new-look US-led Western alliance
adopted the Rule of Law slogan as a weapon to give imperialism a
semblance of legitimacy whenever the imperial ruling elite found it
expedient to meddle in the internal affairs of countries they perceive
to be standing in the way of the flow of imperial global capital.

Basically, these are often countries whose policies reduce or stop
Western access to natural resources within their own borders as well as
refusing to use their own people as a source of cheap labour for
imperial investors.

One needs only to look at the sloganeering and slandering propaganda
dished out by the US before the invasion of Cuba, Grenada, Panama,
Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Libya, Iraq
(twice), and Afghanistan, all after the declaration of the American
century at the end of World War II.

All these countries basically embarked on a path of social policies
geared towards ensuring that the resources within their borders would be
exploited for the benefit of their own peoples, be it through the
nationalisation of major industries by Cuba, the socialist policies of
Maurice Bishop in Grenada, Salvador Allende’s socialist policies in
Chile or Muammar Gadaffi’s role in propping up the Organisation of
Petroleum Exporting Countries to cut oil production, to coerce
meaningful behaviour from the greedy imperialists.

Each time any of these countries is under Western attack, the underlying
propaganda line is always the same — that the leader of that country is
a ‘‘mad dictator’’ who does not respect the rule of law, especially
property rights. President Mugabe only became a "ruthless dictator"
after he repossessed white-held farms for redistribution to Zimbabwe’s
landless rightful owners.

This land is actually regarded as the property whose ‘‘owners’ rights"
were violated by the Government — and that despite that this is land
acquired through fraudulent treaties like the meaningless Moffat Treaty
that claimed that King Lobengula had promised "not to sell, cede or
alienate" any part of his territory, "without the previous knowledge and
sanction of the British High Commissioner for South Africa." It only
takes a perfect fool to believe that any African in the 1880s, not least
an African king, would even comprehend that land, just like air and the
sky, could be sold, ceded or alienated.

Now, President Mugabe is under fire for being a ‘‘lawless dictator’’ for
another move to increase shareholding for indigenous Zimbabweans in the
mining sector. Again, the charge is that he is violating property rights
— rights acquired through the 1888 Rudd Concession obtained by Rudd’s
deception and a ludicrous claim that King Lobengula had given a 100
percent monopoly of all present-day Zimbabwe’s mineral wealth to Cecil
John Rhodes and his British South African Company in exchange for a
paltry 100 pounds a month.

These are the same British settlers whose colleagues were later to sign
another "concession" in Persia, now Iran, claiming that the Persian King
had agreed to sign a concession covering 500 000 square miles of
potential oil land in exchange for 20 000 pounds cash and a paltry 16
percent of the profits. This was in 1913.

When Dr Mossadeq, an Iranian nationalist, took power and nationalised
BP’s oil fields in 1951, the British government fumed and called him a
dictator who did not respect the rule of law.

The American CIA engineered a coup and in 1953 overthrew Dr Mossadeq and
replaced him with the Shah, who later became the US strongman in the
Middle East courtesy of Washington’s support, pretty much the same way
Morgan Tsvangirai keeps saying he wants to be reintegrated into the
"world system" by the Americans and their allies after President Mugabe
is removed.

A highly unachievable feat judging by what has been happening in
Zimbabwe over the last eight years. The quisling Shah had to be kicked
out by popular revolt in 1979 because the Americans made him a military
strongman for their own ends in the Middle East — all at the expense of
his own people who hardly benefited anything from the looting of their
oil by Exxon and BP, the American and British oil companies.

Morgan Tsvangirai is an aspiring Shah who should know better that the
imperialist forces propping his insidious party, albeit faction, have no
intentions of improving the welfare of ordinary Zimbabweans or even
protecting their human rights.

They are only committed to the slogan of the rule of law, human rights
and democracy for their own purposes and ends. In fact, as Noam Chomsky
argues, all imperialists regard the rule of law as a slogan to be used
for three major purposes.

Firstly, it is a slogan to pacify the domestic populations in the
imperialists’ own backyards and that is why the law punishes more of
poor people than it ever does those controlling the means of production.

Secondly, it is a slogan so effectively used to denounce the official
enemies of the US-led imperial alliance — the way Col Gaddafi was
denounced in the 1980s, the way Commandante Castro has been denounced
since 1959, and the way President Mugabe has been denounced since 1999.

Thirdly, it is the last resort in dealing with problems where all other
covert means have proved ineffective and Chile’s Allende easily comes to
mind, so does Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Grenada’s Maurice Bishop.

This is the extent to which the US-led imperial alliance is committed to
the rule of law; otherwise, apart from these three concerns, all
imperialists are sworn to the Rule of Force.

This force comes in various forms. It might be economic force often
executed by the ruthless power of economic sanctions or political force
executed by perfidious and slandering propaganda unleashed by the
Western media and their diplomatic spokespersons.

In the event that these forms of aggression fail to yield the intended
result, then military force has always been an option and there are more
than 30 examples where this has been applied by the US alone since 1945.

The killing of 250 American marines by one massive bomb in Lebanon in
1983 as well as that of 18 American troopers in Somalia 10 years later,
has somewhat made the imperialists think twice before unleashing their
military might on non-compliant governments. Iraq and Afghanistan are
just a replica of the Vietnam Syndrome and 3 800 plus deaths of American
soldiers in just four years, might just be another cause for concern in
the continued use of military force by imperial powers.

Such a high number of casualties comes with a heavy political price as
virtually all the leaders who accompanied George W. Bush into Iraq in
2003 would testify, from the Spanish leader, to Britain’s Tony Blair,
and now Australia’s John Howard. Of course, Bush himself is bound to
leave office with his entire Republican administration for exactly the
same problem.

This development will mean that the imperialist club might have to rely
more on surrogates — the likes of Israel in the Middle East. When the US
bombed Libya in 1986, the only country to declare wholehearted and
enthusiastic support for the attack was Israel. In fact, the Israelis
issued an editorial in the country’s most influential newspaper,
Ha’aretz, where they welcomed America "to the club" and boasted about
their exploits in dealing with "the two-legged animals" in reference to
Palestinians and they expressed utmost happiness that in Washington, the
Americans were now dealing with the "mad dog", a reference to Col
Gadaffi.

The editorial actually stated that "Here . . . the Arabs only understand
one language, over there (in Washington) they say they dealt with
Gadaffi in the only language he understands, that of force…"

Israel has been executing the military force duties for the US-led
Western alliance since the hijack state was formed some 40 years ago.
The imperial alliance is desperate to create many more such surrogates
in all corners of the globe, and this is the reason why Afghanistan has
not known peace since the Cold War days. The US is desperate to surround
China with its surrogate states, just like they would want a
reinforcement of Israel in the Middle East through the creation of
another surrogate state in Iraq after Saddam Hussein went renegade.

In Africa, the US is trying to use the concept of their military base,
Africom, to create at least one or more surrogate states, especially in
West Africa and the Horn of Africa — all for their strategic imperial
control of the continent’s resources as well as the monitoring of the
African Moslem community.

In Zimbabwe, the self-destroying MDC was meant to be propped as a
surrogate regime in order to make Zimbabwe the surrogate state for
imperial interests in Southern Africa and the current negotiations
between the MDC and Zanu-PF are indeed the least the West would want to
hear from their disintegrating political project. They want Zanu-PF dead
and buried and a surrogate put in place and this can only come through
Western-induced regime change, and not mediation for a free and fair
election, which, of course, the MDC can never win.

It is in this vein that reports of proposals for US military bases in
Southern African countries should be taken seriously and Sadc must
reassert its power and influence to dissuade member states from agreeing
to this proposal. It is a proposal meant to create an Israel among us
and should be treated just as such. Indeed, the proposals elsewhere in
Africa should equally get cautious treatment, if not outright
resistance, because history has shown us what America means by
protecting her interests in various parts of the world. Those who
shelter a lioness to protect her interests in their village should not
cry foul when all livestock, and eventually themselves, end up in the
belly.

It is in this line of argument that the illegal regime change agenda
should be viewed, wherever it is applied by the West. Zimbabweans should
know better than to have an American-created regime, even if that regime
was only "partnering" Britain, the US and other Western allies.

If the Western rulers were indeed worried about the rule of law and the
menace of terrorism, they would not have helped Israel to found itself
on the principles of terror: for its existence, Israel founded itself on
the murderous expulsion of 750 000 Palestinians. The "terrorists" that
Israel and the US want to put to death today, are often the sons and
daughters of those same dispossessed Palestinians.

Israel’s evolution has seen the increasing use of state terror and the
pious noises from the West about "terrorism" are just meant to cover up
for the imperial ambitions to create more ruthless surrogate outposts
for Western domination across the world.

This writer asserts that Africa should go to the EU-Africa Summit next
month with the full knowledge of who they are dealing with and African
leaders owe it to posterity to ensure that the continent is protected
from the marauding forces of imperial capital.

This writer has no doubt that Zimbabwe is more than clear on what lies
ahead and all it needs is solidarity from fellow Africans at best, and
mere non-interference at worst.

Together we will overcome. It’s homeland or death for Africa!

--Reason Wafawarova is a Zimbabwean political writer and can be
contacted on wafawarova@ yahoo.co.uk