Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and First Lady Amai Grace Mugabe of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, the party that led the national liberation struggle to free the country from British settler-colonialism.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
Wednesday, 19 January 2011 20:55
by Emily Johannes, in Johannesburg, South Africa
AFRICAN leaders meet in Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, at the end of this month amid unfolding events in Tunisia, Sudan and Cote d’Ivoire that warrant serious attention.
The political events in those countries are a clarion call for the leaders to put their house in order because Europe and America will only make things worse.
African problems need African solutions, even when those problems are caused by Western interference.
Conflict resolution and conflict management should dominate debate at this year’s summit insasmuch as strategies to come up with wholly African military entities to defend and do peacekeeping duties, where necessary, should also be top on the agenda.
With blood dripping from their hands and lust for natural resources lingering in their minds, Western leaders only manipulate the situation and drive the problems beyond resolution.
A divided Africa is good for the West and an Africa without its own army or brigades only exposes itself to foreign military interventions, such as Africom, the condemned US military outfit, which is waiting for the slightest opportunity to ghost in and conquer Africa.
African leaders will live to rue the day they allow Africom to set base on the continent. I am an American myself, and I know what it means for you guys.
That day you will also become subservient to America and you will say “master!” once again, reversing all the gains of independence.
African leaders should know that it is no longer time to continue crying foul about the West’s manipulative Big Brother attitude but to act, like what President Mugabe did with the land reform.
The land reform programme is intrinsically infamous in the West but very famous among black Zimbabweans in particular and black Africans in general.
President Mugabe’s victory over imperialism in Africa’s victory and it is a fact that many African leaders envy President Mugabe and would love to emulate his feat but are scared that they will not stand the heat.
Which normal reasoning black African does not want to reclaim land stolen from his ancestors by colonialists?
For starters, it is a known fact that every conflict in modern-day Africa is sponsored by the West after disliking this leader or that, or after being blocked from exploiting vast natural resources. Natural resources have become very scarce in that side of the world, yet remain in abundance in Africa.
This is the real justification for fanning regime change and not the hullabaloo about democracy and other things. Those are smokescreens.
In reality, Africa’s future lies in its ability to protect its natural resources by ensuring that leaders who are largely anti-Western and pro-African take the reigns of power.
‘‘Good Africans’’ should never take over the reigns of power in Africa for they are an insult to African ethos.
It is now a fast emerging trend that each leader dubbed a democrat by the West is actually their puppet prepared to dance and sing for his master at the expense of his own people.
Africa has a history of slavery, manipulation and exploitation dating back to ancient times and, for God’s sake, which should there be another recolonisation of Africa, albeit subtle.
The whole idea of dividing and effecting regime change in Africa is to recolonise the continent through proxy leaders, disguised as epitomes of democracy and good governance.
This generation of emerging leaders of Western-backed political parties are interconnected and funded from the same resource base and will cause problems throughout Africa.
It happened in Zambia, Kenya, then Zimbabwe and now it’s Cote d’Ivoire and so who is next?
In the case of Zimbabwe President Mugabe has outfoxed his counterparts in the power-sharing deal and is fast climbing out of that marriage of convenience and my friends in that country tell me that if an election was to be held today, the veteran nationalist would win hands down.
Kenya is stuck in the mud.
The good thing is that African leaders are still able to meet routinely and are able to respect their protocol.
In my honest opinion African leaders must move from the abstract to the tangible in terms of defending their core values and principles.
Africa must dictate trade deals where their resources are on demand because they will be the ones of upper hand and not to always play second fiddle.
I am very much tempted not to end this article without mentioning the high level of organisation and unity in Sadc, not because I have migrated to the region, but because it is by far the most vibrant of all of Africa’s regional groupings.
Sadc is the way because it has been able to define what it wants and to say no to what it does not want. Sadc has been able to say no to Africom, it has been able to defend Zimbabwe and it has been able to corner the European Union in terms of Economic Partnership Agreements. ej3333@yahoo.com
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