AFRICAN BY NATURE® Presents Common Sense Newsletters - Africa At A Crossroads: Zimbabwe



Africa At A Crossroads
Zimbabwe

The return of stolen land


Reported
September 1, 2000

Today, Africa is at a crossroads in its' ability to be self-determining in its' development and progress into the new millennium. Nowhere is this challenge more apparent than the events unfolding in Southern Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular. The struggle in Zimbabwe today is not only to throw off the last vestiges of centuries of colonialism, but to prevent new forms of neo-colonialism masquerading under "New world orders", "The GATT", Globalization, and the Zimbabwe Democracy Bill 2000.
The Friends of Zimbabwe, a coalition of African American organizations and individuals with a long history of support for African liberation struggles has taken up the fight to defend the people of Zimbabwe and their legally elected and internationally recognized government, against forces in the United States, Britain, and Zimbabwe who would destabilize and covertly overthrow that government for the narrow economic interest of U.S. and British Corporations, and their partners, a small clique of wealthy white landed gentry.

The well orchestrated attacks on the Zimbabwean Government, and the personal slandering of its' President, H.E. Robert Mugabe is orchestrated to cloud and hide the fact that the debate on the issue of democracy in Zimbabwe is drenched in it's most glaring inequity, it's most blatant reality, that less than 4000 white owned farms control over 60% of the most fertile land in Zimbabwe.

That this inequity has existed for so long did not begin twenty years ago with the Lancaster Agreements that ended the illegal and renegade Rhodesian government of Ian Smith, but is rooted in the 19th century rape of and conspiracy against Zimbabwe by Britain and its' colonial partner in crime, Cecil Rhodes and the British South African Company.

Today, the basis for the attacks and criticisms of Zimbabwe's government, who must and did respond positively to the masses demand for land, rest on two truths. The first truth is that the whites in Zimbabwe, and their corporate partners have no intention of giving or selling Africans back the land they stole, notwithstanding the fact that Britain or the United States will not provide their promised financing for the purchasing of the land by the Zimbabwean government.

Second, the truth that Zimbabwe's troops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as part of the Southern Africa Development Communities (SADC) military command, prevents the de stabilization and partitioning of the sovereign state of the Congo for U.S., British, French, and Belgium corporate interests.

To carry out their opposition to Zimbabwe's domestic land resettlement program, and foreign policy of support for the DRC, the western financial oligarcy has moved on two fronts. Internal opposition to ZANU-PF was created in organizing and financing the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and external opposition is being created in London and Washington D.C., by sponsoring legislation to isolate Zimbabwe. In the U.S. this opposition has developed into and through the move to pass the Zimbabwe Democracy Bill 2000.

The massive financial support and development of an internal opposition movement in Zimbabwe under outside control, is designed to insure that the African membership in the MDC will be controlled and beholden to the very interests who have no intention of returning the land.

On the other hand, the Zimbabwe Democracy Bill 2000 (ZDB), which declares unilaterally that a state of lawlessness exists in Zimbabwe, really seeks to punish the Zimbabwean government and terrorize the people for daring to be self-determining and independent. The ZDB, which passed the U.S. Senate in June '2000, and is in committee in the House of Representatives, seeks to:

Deny Zimbabwe access to international loans and credits.

Demand Zimbabwe respect existing ownership and titles to property.

Pressure Zimbabwe to remove troops from the Congo.

Funnel financial support of not less than $6 Million to opposition groups inside Zimbabwe.

Establish anti-ZANU-PF / Mugabe radio station and broadcast inside Zimbabwe.

Establish Southern African Financial Center for Import/Export Bank, etc., to finance projects __to under mine ZANU-PF.

The Bill authorizes the President of the U.S. to determine when Zimbabwe has returned to democracy. Of course that being a democracy favorable to the U.S. We join with the Organization of African Unity (OAU), The Non-Aligned Movement, and the Southern African Development Community in condemning this American Bill that seeks to legislate policy for an independent and sovereign African country. And we agree with the statement by the OAU that this bill if passed would "interfere in the internal affairs of a member country, and should be opposed".

We welcome H.E. President Robert Mugabe's coming home to Harlem, New York, to speak to the people who strive for the freedom of Africa and African people everywhere. And we join the fight to defeat this draconian Bill called preposterously the Zimbabwe Democracy Bill 2000. We support the sovereignty of the Zimbabwean people to rule themselves without the outside interference of those who seek their re-colonialization.

For More Information Contact:

Friends of Zimbabwe 456 Nostrand Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11216 Phone: 718.398.1766 Fax: 718.623.1855

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