Harare — IN NOVEMBER 2009, the BBC aired a special series celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 as he greatest event of the 20th Century. Indeed from the point of view of those who sided with western imperialism against socialism and communism, it makes sense to take November 9, 1989 as the greatest day in history.

In the CNN interview on September 24, 2009 President Mugabe surprised Christiane Amanpour and many of her white listeners by referring to the Third Chimurenga as the best thing that has ever happened in this country.

One of the reasons why the Third Chimurenga has not been celebrated by Pan-Africanists in the same way the fall of the Berlin Wall has been celebrated by the BBC and most "Cold Warriors" is the influence of the Rhodesian core within the MDC formations which has made it its special mission to campaign against the Third Chimurenga and have it depicted in western media as the worst thing that ever happened in Africa.

It is that Rhodie view of land reform in Zimbabwe which leaders of the MDC formations used to de-campaign the country and request for illegal economic sanctions.

The peculiar behaviour of the top MDC-T leadership over the case of Roy Bennett in October-November 2009 has raised a question among ordinary Zimbabweans which can best be understood in Shona: "Ko Prime Minister wedu anoramwira sadza murungu akazvimbirwa sei? (How can our Prime Minister stage a hunger strike on behalf of a well-fed white man?)

What the Bennett case demonstrates is the reality of the shadowy history of the MDC formations. Rhodesians have always formed the core of the MDC formations and a core of the MDC-T's motivation and ideology.

In the MDC formations, we have been dealing with a Rhodesian hard core serviced by British, European and US agents and NGOs as consultants. That is why each time there has been a crisis within the illegal regime change camp what appeared to be a Rhodesian shadow has always protruded into front offices and threatened to turn the African youngsters in MDC-T into mere shadows.

This paradox explains why the consultants -- the British, US and European handlers of the regime change project -- have for a long time been trying to find a credible leader to defect from Zanu-PF and serve as a robe of legitimacy for the illegal regime change movement.

Two further questions arise from the point of view of the Zimbabwean interest: What made the Rhodesian baggage attractive to the African leaders of the MDC formations? What have been the effects on Zimbabwe of carrying this baggage? Why does the fuss about the white settler minority always obscure the organic interest of the African majority?

First and foremost, the Rhodies were already a specially protected sub-species within Anglo-Saxon imperialist policy long before the formation of the MDC. Any African stooge who agreed to be used as a cover for the protection of special white interests would also enjoy a somewhat protected sub-species status among other Africans.

Readers may find this difficult to take. If we look at the settlerist magazine East Africa and Rhodesia (February 22, 1951), we find Dr A L Geyer, white South Africa's High Commissioner to the UK, addressing the Royal Empire Society.

His address was called South Africa in the World Crisis. The editor of the magazine renamed his summary of the address South Africa's role in Defence and Development.

According to Dr Geyer, the empire needed Africa but whites in Zimbabwe and South Africa made Southern Africa even more special to imperialist interests than the rest of the continent:

"One fact can be put dogmatically: in the interest of both Europe and Africa, the latter must be kept within the European orbit. Europe needs Africa. Africa needs Europe no less... South Africa and Southern Rhodesia [now Zimbabwe] are not a part of Black Africa. Both have built up a permanent white population [by conquest] and established a modern state on European lines."

This made the Rhodies special to imperialism.

When the British Empire collapsed, the US Empire made the same pledge to the Rhodies and to all the white settlers in our region.

Those who were involved in the national liberation movements in Southern Africa (the Second Chimurenga) may remember US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's National Security Memorandum Number 39 of 1969, otherwise known as "The Kissinger Study of Southern Africa."

Its notorious conclusions included the following:

"The whites [in Rhodesia, Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa] are here to stay and the only way that constructive change can come about is through them. There is no hope for the blacks to gain the political rights they seek through violence, which will only lead to chaos and increased opportunities for the communists."

Just as now, so in 1969, the US Government and its ambassadors and advisors also doubted the determination of the African people of this region (including Zimbabweans) to define their interests and objectives and to pursue the same to the end.

Moreover, the Kissinger study did not see the African people as the drivers of change. It therefore concluded that:

"[M] Military realities rule out black victory at any stage. Moreover, there are reasons to question the depth and permanence of black resolve."

So extraordinary value was to be placed on white settlers at the expense of Africans.

Ten years later, when the liberation movements of Zimbabwe were negotiating with Britain at Lancaster House, they found out not only that the white Rhodies were still a specially protected sub-species but also that the Africans being used by the empire to shield the Rhodies were also valued far above those who resisted racism and imperialism.

The British and their North American cousins were first concerned about the fate of the white settlers and their special preference for Bishop Abel Muzorewa's United African National Congress was based on the fact that, just like Morgan Tsvangirai 20 years later, Muzorewa too had accepted the definition of the white settlers as a specially protected sub-species of the empire.

Therefore, US diplomat and Columbia University Professor Elliot P Skinner in 1979 reaffirmed the Kissinger doctrine for the North Americans:

"Our tragedy is that, whether we like it or not, the United States has inherited the role of metropole [or mother country] of all the whites in Southern Africa. This is not a role we welcomed, but it is one we cannot avoid... we are the ones who have led the discussions about the future of these countries [meaning Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Namibia.]"

Indeed the same white world which helped the Rhodesian settler regime to bust UN mandatory sanctions from 1965 to 1980 could also be counted upon to support the Rhodesian agenda of the MDC formations and to agitate illegal regime change and racist sanctions against Zimbabwe from 2000 onwards.

The foundations of that worldwide and racist MDC lobby were put in place during the Rhodesian era. According to Professor Gerald Horne:

"South Africans, French, British, Israelis, Germans, New Zealanders, Australians, and many others from the Pan-European world rallied in defence of the [white] outlaw state [of Rhodesia.]"

The same white lobby and the countries behind it recognised that the African land reclamation revolution of 1992-2002 was in fulfilment of the same African liberation objectives, which the Rhodesian regime had resisted from 1965 to 1980. So the same struggle continues.

In other words, the African leaders in the MDC formations found the Rhodie baggage attractive because it was backed and well-sponsored by powerful Anglo-Saxon countries.

The second reason why the MDC formations found the Rhodie baggage attractive was the money. There was money from the Rhodies still in Zimbabwe. There was money from the Rhodies in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the US and Europe. What makes Roy Bennett indispensable to MDC-T today is his proven ability to raise funds from the scattered Rhodies.

The third reason was that, in a racist Anglo-Saxon world, the Rhodies would help to make the Africans in the MDC formations acceptable to white racists. The late arch-racist US Senator Jesse Helms, as Chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, received Muzorewa and Ndabaningi Sithole through Ian Smith in 1979 in the same way he received those MDC leaders who took the draft of the so-called Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act to the same Committee in 2000. MDC leaders needed white racists to introduce them to the corridors and coffers of white racist power.

The fourth reason why the Rhodie baggage was attractive to the MDC formations was that the Rhodies had a clear agenda which would be accepted by the racist Anglo-Saxon world as a genuine grievance against the African liberation movement in Zimbabwe.

They wanted to keep most of the prime land stolen from the African majority since 1890. Most of the Anglo Saxon countries were also land thieves interested in trashing and defeating all developing world reparations movements.

If the MDC formations could neutralise the African land reclamation movement in Zimbabwe, then it could count on all the support it needed from land thieves around the globe.

The fifth reason why the Rhodie agenda was attractive was because, unlike the dispossessed African majority whose grievances mostly lay outside formal colonial and neo-colonial white law, the Rhodies were the true subject, the true beneficiaries of white law in Zimbabwe.

Even the judiciary, 20 years after political independence, would be inclined to defend white property against African reclamation. So, in terms of this law and in view of in-built Anglo-Saxon cultural biases; the Rhodie case against the Third Chimurenga would be easy to sell.

However, the world does not stand still. The current global financial tsunami or global recession has highlighted the emergence of centres of power other than the Anglo-Saxon axis. This is a reality that the Rhodies, MDC formations and their sponsors overlooked back in 1999.