AU must honour President

By Sam Akaki (18/12/07)

HE is not the first, only the latest victim of the West. Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ahmed ben Bella, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Samora Machel, Acan Latin Can, Eduardo Mondlane, Luis Cabral, Milton Obote, the unreconstructable socialist, and other African leaders who were assassinated or haunted to death allegedly because they were communists, terrorists or mass murderers.


But Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe seems to be indestructible, thanks to the Mbeki-led African renaissance and solidarity, which forced the organisers of the recent EU-Africa Summit to choose between Cde Mugabe and the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

However, the British did not relent without fronting blacks to fight blacks. Ms Claire Short, an Irish-born former British secretary for international development who knows all about British injustice such as their genocidal Irish potato famine of 1846-50; told the BBC that Baroness Valerie Amos, a black former head of the House of Lords, was sent to the EU-Africa Summit to deliver official insults against Cde Mugabe because she is black.

At the same time, Bishop John Sentamu, also black, was once more sent to BBC to act as a clown, demeaning his office and person by cutting his dog collar to pieces, and declaring that he will not wear any collar again until Cde Mugabe is dead!

Since independence, a simple rule of thumb has emerged. If you see an African leader being demonised by the west and its hired apologists like Bishop Sentamu; that leader must be doing something good for Africa. And if an African leader is praised, you can rest assured he is a traitor.

In October 1981, US president Ronald Reagan welcomed "Field Marshal" Mobutu Sese Seko to the White House with these words: "President Mobutu is a friend of democracy and freedom, a voice of good sense and goodwill. Zaire is taking the difficult but necessary steps to ensure sustained economic progress, and it’s important that we and Zaire’s other friends do what we can to help’’. (http://www.state.gov/)

The only "voice of good sense and goodwill" which Mobutu exhibited was his role as a rented conduit for US, British, Belgium, German and French money and arms to sustain the Apartheid regime and Jonas Savimbi’s genocidal war against African liberation fighters.

The vitriolic attacks against Robert Mugabe and Omar Bashir at the EU-Africa summit were not motivated by European Union concerns about human rights and good governance, but vested interest.

Even the New Vision (Ugandan tabloid) said in its editorial commentary, "If the west is to be believed and trusted in Africa, all the Mugabes on the continent should be appraised and condemned in equal measure. Short of that, summits like the EU-Africa one seem to be self-serving." ("Europe will not solve Africa’s problems", NV, December 11).

Fearing that growing Chinese investment in Africa is overtaking the EU’s dominant commercial interests which amounted to US$315,2 billion in 2006 Britain, assisted by Germany, orchestrated the attacks against President Mugabe and Mr Bashir to blackmail African leaders into hurriedly signing new so-called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) by the December 31 deadline! Under the deal, the EU promises to offer duty-free terms for African imports in return for more liberalisation and opening of African markets to Europe. This is a sugar-coated offer which would flood African markets with cheap EU goods, thus devastating African economies.

Little wonder that African Union Commission president Mr Alpha Oumar Konare rejected the proposal saying, "No one will make us believe we don’t have the right to protect our economic fabric".

And speaking for the African leaders, President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal said "It was said several times during the plenary session and it was said again this morning: African states reject the EPAs."

The rejection by Africa of the so-called EPAs, the EU, which preaches about opening its market to Africa, is now bound to show its true colours by imposing punitive tariffs on African exports, starting on January 1, 2008.

But on Wednesday, December 13, a Labour Member of Parliament, Mr David Drew asked the secretary of state for foreign affairs if he will make a statement on reports that President Thabo Mbeki addressed a private session of the EU-Africa summit and asked for the removal of all sanctions on Zimbabwe if the EU wants new trade deals with Africa".

In reply, a Foreign Office minister for Europe told the British Parliament that any details of statements made in private will first be discussed by EU leaders before being made public.

Even the Financial Times, an influential international publication, had to concede, "Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president walked into the European Union-Africa summit on Saturday conscious that he had won the first part of the argument with his bête noire, Britain", ("Mugabe scores coup at EU-Africa summit", FT, December 8).

As a fitting tribute to this one surviving African hero of the liberation war, why can’t the African Union build Robert Mugabe’s statue at their headquarters in Addis Ababa for posterity?

l This article was first published in the Ugandan newspaper Sunday Monitor (December 16 2007).