----- Original Message -----
From: "Osun Yemi" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 11:15 PM
Subject: [panafricanperspective] FW: Mugabe: A Victim of Colonial Racism


>
>
> >Mugabe: Victim of colonial racism
> >
> >By Taju Tijani
> >Courtesy of the Nigerian Guardian
> >
> >THE racist demonisation and imperial conspiracy against
> >Robert Gabriel Mugabe of Zimbabwe should be a source of great
> >agitation among black African leaders who still cherish the
> >freedom and independence of the black African continent. That
> >odious conspiracy reached a finale in the recently concluded
> >Commonwealth Head of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Abuja,
> >where he pulled his beleaguered country out of the moribund
> >Commonwealth.
> >
> >Commentators of all hue have presented arguments denouncing
> >Mugabe for corruption, oppression, tyranny, brutality,
> >dictatorship, intimidation and pursuing ill-informed vendetta
> >against political opponents and innocent white settlers. Any
> >sensible analysis of the Zimbabwe's catastrophe must
> >recognise that it has had two central aspects. The first is
> >Tony Blair's personal vendetta against Mugabe. The second
> >aspect is the neo-colonialist and racist abhorrence of seeing
> >a blackman humiliating and killing whites. The received
> >wisdom had always been the other way round as it so often
> >happened in most western democracies and North America.
> >
> >Mugabe's crisis represents the first round of the many neo-
> >imperialist fights we need to fight in Africa. Simply put, it
> >is the fight between racism and justice for blacks in a
> >polarised world where whites are becoming arrogant,
> >unilateral and using both economic and military clout to
> >submit other races to humiliation, political impotency and
> >economic paralysis. Honourable Tony Blair, ahead of those who
> >are baying for the blood of Mugabe, found undue support in
> >both right-wing and liberal papers.
> >
> >Robert Dowden, self-styled African expert, called Mugabe "the
> >Saddam of South Africa" and made an audacious call for
> >Britain to implement "regime change" by force in sovereign
> >Zimbabwe. The tone of the agenda in British press against
> >Mugabe was overwhelmingly combative, arrogant, disdainful,
> >snobbish and worst of all, racist. Leader writers, opinion-
> >formers, columnists and desk editors not used to seeing a
> >former colonial servant trading insults with their Prime
> >Minister rallied to his defence because the white way of life
> >in Africa, with all its odious colonial arrogance, was under
> >attack.
> >
> >Mythologising the corruption and tyrannical crimes of Mugabe
> >is hypocritical, given the huge racial inequalities in the
> >distribution of land and wealth. Black African leaders are
> >famous for tyranny and corruption. They are endemic,
> >omnipresent and eternal companions of our lives in black
> >Africa. To objectify the western argument of tyranny,
> >corruption and bad governance we need to move from the
> >particular to the general.
> >
> >Before the sudden death of Mobutu Sese Seko, he was a
> >pampered local manager of western powers. Then, no western
> >governments saw or heard of his evils. Idi Amin Dada was
> >tolerated until the mass expulsion of Asians from Uganda in
> >the 70s. opponents of such polity failed to see the
> >resentment and envy generated by the virtual takeover of an
> >African country by a tiny economic-dominant minority from
> >Mumbai and Lahore. Britain had to support the Ugandan rebel
> >movement of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni because of the logistics
> >and financial nightmare in absorbing thousands of expelled
> >Asians.
> >
> >Daniel Arap Moi, the former dictator and tyrant of Kenya, was
> >not demonised by the western press because of one important
> >reason. He did not, in his 24 years of misrule, cause panic
> >or economic and social shift in the lives of the rich and
> >overfed white gamekeepers scattered across Kenya. When Moi
> >was in power, he was more ferociously tyrannical, more
> >corrupt and forcefully suppressed all opponents of his
> >regime. Among his victims was Robert Ouko, his foreign
> >minister, who died in suspicious circumstances in 1990. Only
> >recently, Mr John Githongo, the leading corruption czar in
> >Kenya, traced a black hole of one billion dollars to Moi's
> >opulent doorstep. Unable to prosecute such a demi-god,
> >Githongo, quietly announced to his apathetic nation that Moi
> >is a different Kenyan!
> >
> >President Thabo Mbeki is left alone to nurse the wounded
> >dream of his African Renaissance that may never see the light
> >of the day. Why? He will be committing political suicide like
> >Mugabe across the border if he dare ruffles the excesses of
> >the economic-dominant while minority in Sandton, Johannesburg
> >and Cape Town. Equitable land and wealth redistribution must
> >stay suspended in South Africa if he wants to complete his
> >term as South African president. Mandela understood this
> >whiteman's power play and remained impotent in land and
> >wealth redistribution throughout his governance.
> >
> >Inevitably, Mbeki had to find Mugabe's pan-Africanism and
> >belligerence admirable and lofty. Unlike other leaders who
> >view Mugabe with the blinkers of corruption and tyranny,
> >Mbeki knows that racialised falsehood account for most of the
> >cumulative portrait of Mugabe in the western media. He was
> >once a victim of vicious campaign of hate in the west due to
> >his stance on the causes of HIV and AIDS. And his historical
> >mission to fight the wrongs of colonialism has presented
> >itself for all black Africans to embrace. We should not allow
> >the forces of colonialism that destroyed and divided Africans
> >society to happen again. If you look at the Mugabe problem
> >with brute, metallic logic, there are good reasons to support
> >him. But rather than back Mugabe who is facing an orchestrated
> >campaign of racially motivated animus, we betray our own and
> >call him ruthless, corrupt and a murderer. It is true that
> >Zimbabweans have been cowed by a violent authoritarian rule
> >just as Nigeria is one of the worst countries for just about
> >everything.
> >
> >But unlike Mugabe, Obasanjo has no white economic-dominant
> >minority to dispossess of their ill-gotten land and
> >machinery. Unlike Mugabe, Brian Donnelly, the British High
> >Commissioner in Harare, is not plotting to overthrow
> >Obasanjo's government. Unlike Mugabe, Obasanjo has no Morgan
> >Tsvangirai who leads an opposition movement funded by white
> >business and white farmers. John Howard of Australia, who
> >leads a bitter campaign of Commonwealth exclusion against
> >Mugabe is a racist par excellence.
> >
> >He has been waging a way of attrition against black
> >Aboriginal people, denying them land rights and incurring a
> >shaming indictment of racism from the UN committee on
> >discrimination. Howard, and to some extent Helen Clark of New
> >Zealand, both from white, rich nations had to support Blair
> >in his racialised battle with Mugabe. It is in the tradition
> >of white Anglo-Saxon to 'stick together' and force surrender
> >among inferior races, regardless of historical wrong and
> >racial injustice.
> >
> >Wars in Congo, Sudan, Angola and Burundi do not get the
> >coverage Zimbabwe gets because they do not involve whites.
> >Black Africa has to resurrect its classical pre-colonial
> >nationalism and fight the demons of neo-colonialism infesting
> >the minds of western leaders. The legacies of colonialism,
> >apartheid, racism and modern discrimination have all combined
> >to produce an impotent black Africa with a shrinking voice in
> >a rabidly racist world.
> >
> >  Tijani lives in London
> >
> >----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >Distributed By: THE PAN-AFRICAN RESEARCH AND DOCUMENTATION CENTER
> >                 211 SCB BOX 47, WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY
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> >
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