Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Africa Must Consolidate Gains in 2008

Africa must consolidate gains

By Isdore Guvamombe
Zimbabwe Herald

AFTER a year in which Africa, through Zimbabwe, successfully scored major governance and diplomatic victories against the United States of America, Britain and their allies, time has now come for African leaders to maintain the tempo and concretise their position while reflecting on the past and projecting into the future.

The platform is the African Union Summit scheduled for the end of this month.

After taking in a lot of punches in Lisbon, Europe is now having sleepless nights, on how to woodwink Africa into allowing it to exploit Africa’s rich resources, like it has plundered before.

With lessons from Zimbabwe over the war on resources offering a case study for all patriotic African leaders, it should be easy for them to seriously consider harvesting the continent’s natural resources for the benefits of their citizenry, without necessarily pleasing the West.

Zimbabwe has been steadfast in proving to the world that its citizens should come first in enjoying the country’s natural resources, regardless of what the world’s super powers think and regardless of the subsequent backlash in form of illegal sanctions and this should give Africa new political impetus.

To date, Bush, Blair, John Howard, and of late, Gordon Brown epitomise the latest evil insult and assault on African humanism, through their refusal to accept that President Mugabe is helping Zimbabweans benefit from their resources that had for long, been a plundered by minority whites.

From now on, African leaders must rise to the occasion and demand deals that are beneficial to their people, because America and Europe are now more desperate for African resources, after seeing the course successfully taken by Zimbabwe and the push effect it now has on other countries.

Africa’s enemies and former colonial masters have changed strategy and now want to maintain hegemony on the continent’s resources through subtle colonial structures and illegal regime change tactics, to enable them to continue tapping resources under so-called partnerships, which are in fact, tricky tactics of maintaining a grip on Africa’s resources.

America in particular, has crafted a new project, the Africa Partnership Station through which the US is trying to create special sea bases using warships that will patrol African waters without building shore bases, as a means to block other countries, especially China and Russia from accessing African resources.

As African leaders prepare for the AU Summit, they should know that the victory for Zimbabwe in Portugal was indeed victory for the entire continent.

But the victories that Africa has scored in the past year or so, might end up at zero unless they are followed by concrete measures to guard against subtle exploitation of African resources by America and Britain and their allies.

Coming up with regional positions on matters of interest such as exploitation of resources, is important but coming up with a continental position, like what Africa did by insisting on President Mugabe’s invitation to Portugal, is more important than anything else. African resources for Africans!

Africa should also fight being lectured upon by America and Europe on issues like democracy, good governance and accountability, because Africa is indeed the vanguard of those virtues after years of fighting against colonialism and imperialism.

Allowing America and Europe to lecture Africa on good governance, democracy and accountability is akin to allowing a devil to preach sanctity for George Bush and Tony Blair and several other past colonial and imperialist leaders before them, have committed more sins against African humanism than anybody else.

America and the majority of European countries are fighting a war to block rising economic power and trade bases in the form of Russia and China, which have sought genuine fair deals with African countries.

The deals from Russia and China have sailed through without political strings attached hence, African leaders are showing more interest in the Far East, compared to the West.

This has sent panic to America and Britain.

A case in point is the fact that the US is having sleepless nights in its impish attempt to establish a permanently resident, armed force for Africa, the Africom.

Sadc has stood strong and said no to hosting of Africom and Central Africa has done the same but the problem seems to be in West Africa where Liberia has clearly said it was prepared to host Africom.

After Algeria refused to host the force that would give America an advantage in milking Africa of its resources at will, and in influencing the political governance of the continent, America is now using divide and rule tactics.

America has now introduced Africa Partnership Station, a framework in which America plans to create special sea bases, to patrol the continent

News is that one of the major tactics adopted by the US is to target individual countries in which it will invest in military projects that could eventually be synchronised under one military command.

That tactics will, according to reports from Washington, woodwink African governments into believing that the US would invest in promoting economic, military and social projects to benefit Africa but once the US eventually manages to set up the military command, it becomes Africa’s policeman.

It should be clear that some of the clandestine business arrangements America and Europe are trying to engage African States in, will eventually turn out to be military projects aimed at propping up the Africom command structure.

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