Harare — Allow me to extend my sincere appreciation to the current chair of Sadc President Levy Mwanawasa for his firm warning that the Sadc bloc will boycott the EU-Africa summit if President Mugabe is barred from the meeting scheduled for Portugal in December.

The colonialists have essentially been defeated. It is my assertion that every African is obliged to stand up for equality, democracy, human rights and social justice - not just for ourselves as individuals or only in our villages, cities, countries and regions - but for all Africans across Africa regardless of gender, ethnicity, race, political or religious beliefs. These must be the bedrock of genuine pan-Africanism. Pan-Africanism in its meaning sets aside cultural differences, asserting the principality of shared experiences in order to foster solidarity and resistance to exploitation which is exactly what our neighbourly President Mwanawasa has done. To you Gordon Brown and your Western allies I say that that is why this country is called Zimbabwe not Rhodesia, and President Mugabe is not Ian Smith.

He has been our President for the past 27 years. Your so-called boycott stinks of your ever imperialistic and colonialist tendencies. Your demand that President Mugabe should uphold the "rule of law" is really a demand for the "rights" of the whites (less than 1 percent of the population) to own the country's best land which they forcibly took possession of during the bloody process of colonisation. White ownership of the land was a guarantee that the capitalist class and imperialism could continue to exploit the people and the resources of Zimbabwe, while 70 percent of the population live in abject poverty in the countryside.

We will not stand by while you try to recolonise our country again with the help of your local proxies. For you to gain power and prestige at our expense is totally unacceptable. What you are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan is not acceptable in Zimbabwe.

As is our slogan, Zimbabwe will never be a colony again and surely we will never be a colony again. Brown keep your England and let President Mugabe keep his Zimbabwe.