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Zimbabwe: Opposition Rooted in Imperialism
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 Published by the government of Zimbabwe |
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The Herald (Harare)
OPINION
9 May 2008
Posted to the web 9 May 2008
Stephen Gowans
Harare
Zimbabwe's Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa last Friday denounced the United States and Britain for their interference in Zimbabwe's elections.
At the same time, he decried the Morgan Tsvangirai faction of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T), and its civil society partner, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, as being part of a US and British programme to reverse the gains of Zimbabwe's national liberation struggle.
"It is no secret that the US and the British have poured in large sums of money behind the MDC-T's sustained demonisation campaign," Chinamasa said. "Sanctions against Zimbabwe (were intensified) just before the elections," while "large sums of money" were poured into Zimbabwe "by the British and Americans to bribe people to vote against President Mugabe."
The goal, Chinamasa continued, is to "render the country ungovernable in order to justify external intervention to reverse the gains of the land reform programme". The minister went on to describe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC-T "for what they are -- an Anglo-American project designed to defeat and reverse the gains of Zimbabwe's liberation struggle, to undermine the will of the Zimbabwean electorate and to return the nation to the dark days of white domination".
The minister also described the ZESN as "an American-sponsored civil society appendage of the MDC-T". Were they reported in the West, it would be fashionable to sneer at Chinamasa's accusations as lies told to justify a crackdown on the opposition. But, predictably, they haven't been. For anyone who is following closely, however, the minister's charges hardly ring false. The ZESN is funded by the US Congress and US State Department though the National Endowment for Democracy and United States Agency for International Development. Its board is comprised of a phalanx of US and British-backed fifth columnists.
Board member Reginald Matchaba Hove won the NED democracy award in 2006. Described by its first director as doing overtly what the CIA used to do covertly, the NED - and by extension the NGOs it funds -- are not politically neutral organisations. They have an agenda, and it is to promote US interests under the guise of promoting democratisation. Hove is also director of the Southern Africa division of billionaire financier George Soros' Open Society Institute, which has been involved in funding overthrow movements in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere. Soros also has an agenda: to open societies to Western profit making. Indeed, the board members of the ZESN comprise an A-list of overthrow activists, with multiple interlocking connections to imperialist governments and corporate foundations.
It doesn't take long to connect Hove to left scholar Patrick Bond (of Her Majesty's NGOs) and his Centre for Civil Society. The Centre is a programme partner with the Southern Africa Trust, one of whose trustees is ZESN board member Reginald Matchaba Hove. The Centre for Policy Studies, whose mission is to prepare civil society in Zimbabwe for political change (that is, to prepare it to overthrow the Zanu-PF Government) is funded by the Southern Africa Trust, a partner of Bond's Centre for Civil Society. Other sponsors include the Soros, Ford, Mott, Heinrich Boll (German Green party), and Friedrich Ebert (German Social Democrats) foundations, the Rockefeller Brothers, the NED, South African Breweries and a fund established by the chairman of mining and natural resources company, Anglo American.
Significantly, Zimbabwe is rich in minerals. Zanu-PF's programme is to put control of the country's mineral resources, as well as its land, in the hands of the black majority, depriving transnational mining companies, like Anglo American, of control and profits. Everjoice Win, the former spokesperson for the ZESN, is on the advisory board of Bond's centre. The Centre supports the Freedom of Expression Institute, which is funded by George Soros and the British government's Westminster Foundation for Democracy. The FEI is a partner of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (also funded by the British government), whose director Rashweat Mukundu is a board member of the ZESN. Bond co-authored a report with Tapera Kapuya, a fellow of ZESN sponsor, the NED. He also contributed to a report titled Zimbabwe's Turmoil, along with John Makumbe and Brian Kagoro.
The report was sponsored by the Institute for Security Studies, which is financed by the governments of the US, Britain, France and Canada, the Rockefeller Brothers, and, of course, the ubiquitous George Soros and Ford foundations. Makumbe has published in the NED's Journal of Democracy, and is a former director of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (funded, not surprisingly, by the NED). The Coalition, like the Centre for Policy Studies, is devoted to ousting the Mugabe Government under the guise of promoting democracy, but in reality promotes the profits of firms like Anglo American and the interests of US and British investors. Kagoro is a former co-ordinator of the Coalition. Significantly, the Coalition is a partner of the ZESN.
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Add to this Bond's celebrating the Western-trained and financed underground movements Zvakwana and Sokwanele as an "independent left" and his co-authoring a Z-Net article on Zimbabwe with MDC founding member Grace Kwinjeh (MDC leader Tsvangirai admitted in a February 2002 SBS Dateline programme that his party is financed by European governments and corporations), and it's clear that Bond links up with the spider web of American and British-sponsored civil society appendages of the MDC-T.
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Does the Herald newspaper live in the real world? Robert Mugabes failed economic policies have caused the economic collapse of what was once a succesfull country.
This is an obvious attempt as part of the campaign that is being orchestrated in order to reverse the will of the people.
Zimbabwe will never be successfull again as long as Mugabe stays in power.
Ah, my stalker is back! Don’t forget to add another crucial link in the imperial chain: Patrick Bond occasionally files commentaries on Steven Gowans’ blogsite, and Gowans claims to be a resident of Ottawa, Canada, the geographical site of a government in league with the US in various nefarious adventures, including overthrow and imperial control of Afghanistan (about which, tellingly, Gowans writes little), and moreover, Gowans pays taxes to the Canadian government, which means Bond willingly consorts with yet more funders of imperialism.
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