Botswana President Ian Khama (left) has been confirmed as the winner of the national elections. He is photographed here with South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, who is also the former interim president., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
Botswana: Sadc’s slouching novice
August 8, 2013 Opinion & Analysis
Udo W. Froese
REMEMBER Botswana’s president, Lieutenant-General Seretse Khama Ian Khama, hosted Zimbabwe’s MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai when he left his country via South Africa to stay in Gaborone and called for his support? Remember the letter written by one American Jeff Ramsay, then Botswana presidency’s spokesman, whose letter withdrew the country’s support for Sadc’s unanimous decision to return Zimbabwe to the Commonwealth in Abuja, Nigeria, in December 2003?
Today, 10 years later, Jeff Ramsay is Botswana’s Minister of Information. Ramsay called for an audit of Zimbabwe’s elections, which the AU and the Sadc had declared as free, fair and credible.
It is also important to note that Debswana plays a significant role in Botswana’s economy and political power administration.
The powerful global diamond cartel has its cutting and polishing factories and its dealing and exporting offices in Botswana’s Diamond Technology Park, firmly positioned close to the Sir Seretse Khama Airport of Gaborone, an airport recently built by the Chinese. Earlier this year, Lt-Gen Ian Khama spoke critically of China’s role in Botswana.
A few weeks ago, the BBC World Service reported that Debswana had concluded a US$5 billion diamond deal, which would be to “the benefit of Botswana’s economy”. And, in September this year, the diamond cartel’s former CSO in London will move its head office to Gaborone, Botswana.
In less than an hour’s drive to the north of Gaborone, the biggest military airport was built some 20 years ago. It was built as a US airbase. This was done, among other things, in preparation for the possibility of having to evacuate whites from South Africa in the run-up to that country’s first democratic elections.
In Maun, in north-western Botswana, the US built a satellite command and monitoring station, manned by US personnel only. In addition to the above, the US established Africa Military Command stations in Botswana. The above-mentioned are recorded facts in the media, as Botswana has often been mentioned to be an American satellite in the Sadc region.
South Africa’s ruling ANC always had cordial relations with its northern neighbour, Botswana. In the years of apartheid oppression, Botswana was most accommodating of South Africans fleeing from the oppressive regime in Pretoria.
That was yesteryear, however. The ANC, like most ruling struggle movements, also underwent massive changes. South Africa’s ANC, as it was until the 1980s, is no longer.
It was transformed into a ruling political party, badly bruised by the CODESA negotiations, its Sunset clauses and so-called “black-on-black violence”, leading up to the first democratic elections and a new South Africa in May 1994. The former colonial apartheid regime with its powerful international Western support base was able to maintain the old status quo.
This is history. However, what leads Botswana and its international Western backers to be hostile towards President Mugabe and Zanu-PF?
It is quite simple . . . diamonds, diamonds, lots of diamonds and platinum and rich land!
Remember, it was stolen before. Cecil John Rhodes and his British South Africa Company invaded the land north of the Limpopo; killing hundreds of indigenous people and called it Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. This occupation, theft and, to top it all, the eventually legalised racial discrimination, were the root cause of Zimbabwe’s First, Second and Third Chimurengas.
One needs to be honest and ask, who strategises and funds the “rebel, tribal and civil wars” in Africa? Who brings the arms, ammunition and drugs to Africa’s destabilised lands and plundered regions? Who trains the mercenaries and “rebel soldiers”? Why, in the first place, terrorise Africa, while enforcing diabolically structured poverty upon the people? Who are the paymasters of the lobbies that operate from the shadows and their covert operations? Who engineers the highly treasonous infiltration of terrorism and mercenaries, executing the ultimate goal of “regime change”?
It is clear that racism, low-key civil wars and plunder go hand-in-hand and cannot be divorced from one another. That is the reality of a powerful foreign policy, which is backed by neo-liberalism.
President Mugabe and the Zanu-PF-led government stand in the way of the powerful global diamond cartel, which is hell bent on wrestling the land and its wealth from its original owners. Yet, Anglo-America’s huge land-tract in Zimbabwe of reportedly over 800 000 hectares has never been touched.
Meanwhile, its related diamond cartel uses all tricks in the trade to undermine Harare in its bid to nationalise its assets and return them to the original owners. No one, however, mentions it.
It is in the aforementioned context that Botswana with its history of US and Israeli geo-strategic interests, more particularly in the diamond wealth of Debswana, is used as a spearhead to assist in manipulating Zimbabwe’s authorities into “negotiating” its resources over to the global diamond cartel. It is planned that Zimbabwe’s diamond industry would eventually take a similar shape to Namibia’s NamDeb and Botswana’s Debswana, which is an officially protected ‘50/50 percent-State-DeBeers’ arrangement.
The British banker, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, once said, if he had control over the finances of a country, he would not care who ruled it. This makes sense to plunder barons, their lobbies and their gatekeepers. Are Botswana’s Khama and Ramsay the gatekeepers of those who keep Zimbabwe’s resources and the regional stability (or instability) in their aim?
Udo W. Froese, non-institutionalised, independent political and socio-economic analyst and columnist, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
This article can also be found on the blog: theotherafrika.wordpress.com
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