We Should Resist Neo-Colonialism

Kojo Botsio, Che Guevara, Kwame Nkrumah and two Cuban officials in Ghana during the Guevara visit in late 1964 and early 1965 when he toured several African states. Guevara would work to liberate Congo in 1965., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

We should resist neo-colonialism

Friday, 16 December 2011
Zimbabwe Herald

Bowden Mbanje and Darlington Mahuku
Liberation movements in Southern Africa face a real regime change threat from powerful Western countries which are bent on reversing the liberation gains achieved by nationalist parties.

This neo-Western onslaught or neo-imperialism which is targeted on indigenous pan-African nationalist parties is being championed by the USA, Britain and their other Western acolytes.

The Western offensive geared on dismantling and even destroying liberation movements/nationalist parties actually has the full co-operation of some of the African leaders, civil society groups, misguided Africans in the Diaspora, donor funded boot licking media houses, pseudo-democratic parties and a litany of other Western sponsored African surrogates found in Africa as well as outside the continent.

This 21st century scramble for the ownership of sub-Saharan Africa's abundant resources is characterised by betrayal, back biting and stabbing of African leaders by political parties within their own governments as well as by other African leaders.

It is also typified by lies peddled against certain leaders as well as divisive tactics centred on isolation and persecution of perceived hardliners and rewarding of those puppets that toe the neo-liberal line. This double-crossing group of African leaders is given dubious democratic awards for their treachery by their Western handlers.

Laurent Gbagbo was brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) to answer for his purported crimes against humanity which include murder and rape charges. Whatever Gbagbo did can never be compared to the atrocities committed by Bush and Blair.

George W Bush and his partner in crime Tony Blair committed worse crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan ranging from cold blooded murder of more than a million innocent civilians to the raping of hundreds of Iraqi and Afghan women by their troops.

The new Western sponsored kid on the bloc, Alassane Ouattara to prove himself a "good African leader" actually handed Gbagbo to the rabid racist ICC to stand trial for these questionable and debatable crimes.

The handing in of Gbagbo to stand trial at the Hague is a well-orchestrated and calculated move. First of all, a free Gbagbo would have remained a big threat to Ouattara's power and credibility as the new Ivorian president.

It would have also been a great menace to French imperial interests in the country which Gbagbo stood to challenge in its entirety.

Second on the agenda was to completely destroy the former Ivorian leader's political career as well as weakening his political party, leaving it vulnerable and leaderless. Thirdly, the whole regime change agenda is centred on eradicating African nationalist hardliners replacing them with puppets that toe the Western liberal line.

Lastly, being handed to the International Court actually means that you are a tyrant, a monster and a very dangerous criminal. No one in his right senses would want to be associated with such a leader as well as political party and whatever support that still remains for Gbagbo will soon be history.

Ouattara and his French handlers have actually succeeded in wiping out any credible political opposition in the country which is actually a complete negation of a people's democratic right to belong to a political party of their choice.

If all fairness is to be said Ouattara like his friend, Raila Odinga (in the aftermaths of the Kenyan elections) also had a lot to answer for the many civilian deaths. This holier than thou attitude is hypocritical in every sense. The major culprits in this case are also Ouattara's militia and this is the truth which every Ivorian is aware of. It's as if incidents leading to Gbagbo's dubious arrest were done in a non-violent way.

These events were bloody and were also characterised by use of brute force on combatants and civilians alike by Ouattara's men, the UN peacekeepers and French forces.

When clashes between Gbagbo and Ouattara's men occurred there were many atrocities committed by both camps. What's worrying is that the facts on the ground actually point to Ouattara's men as the major
culprits in these murders and rape cases.

Every Ivorian is aware of what crimes Ouattara's militia committed in the North.

These people really take Africans as fools.

Gbagbo like a clown is brought before a Euro-centric circus where he is mocked and ridiculed at the amusement of the pro-Western judges and their African sponsored and donor funded human rights groups. This ICC circus which is selective in word and deed punishes Africans for very trivial crimes while the Bushes, Blairs, Camerons, Sarkozys and Obamas of this world are on the loose.

Bush and Blair's hands dripping with the blood of innocent Iraqi and Afghan citizens are not made to stand trial by the same court.

Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron still smelling of the fresh blood of thousands of massacred innocent Libyan civilians are very free men.

Africans are taken as people devoid of a memory and as such they should be lied to until they accept the lie as the absolute truth.

The powerful Western countries under the leadership of France and backed by the Western controlled United Nations as well as Western sponsored African marionettes dotted all over West Africa helped to remove Gbagbo from power.

The 16 member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) were accomplices of the North in bringing down the Gbagbo regime. Ghana refused to take part in this well planned white man's regime change agenda since the pure revolutionary blood of Nkrumah still drives Ghanaian political and economic thought.

The same pattern of treasonous African leaders is also found in the East African grouping the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) which has helped the Americans in fighting against the al Shabab Islamic group in Somalia.

Facts on the ground clearly show that the Islamists had actually brought stability in a country that had gone for years under the control of various warlords. That stability did not last long before the Americans accused the new Islamist establishment in Somalia of harbouring terrorists like the late Osama bin Laden and other so called dangerous fugitives on the USA most wanted list.

ECOWAS needs the leadership of a Chavez type figure while IGAD also needs the guidance of a leader with an Ahmadinejad stature to free the grouping from its shackles of colonialism and mental slavery.

In the Sadc region such treacherous acts have been quickly repelled by revolutionary parties which now know the enemy and its dirty ways.

The grouping now believes in a unity of purpose as evidenced in the case of the now discredited Sadc tribunal. However, despite this façade or smokescreen of unity within the organisation there is a lot of treachery and back stabbing taking place. It is no hidden secret nor does it need a rocket scientist to tell that there are some fissures within the Sadc grouping.

This truth has actually made revolutionary parties within the grouping to come up with various strategies as to counter this neo-Western onslaught which is characterised by enemies from within working in cohorts with enemies from without. The good thing is that revolutionary and nationalist parties in the Sadc region unlike those in the other African groupings have realised that they need to plan with urgency if they are to survive this Western offensive camouflaged as democratisation.

The African puppets controlled by American and European strings rubbish their former African predecessors as a way of gaining credibility not from their people but from Western backers. It was quite disheartening news when Ouattara and his other West African entourage of Western "blue eyed boys" went all the way to America to be praised by Obama as democratic leaders. Such is the disease amongst African leaders that it is the Western leaders who wield the power to label any Third World leader a democrat.

Doesn't true democracy come from the people who give you legitimate authority to govern them? Does Africa have to wait for a Western leader to tell it that it is democratic or do its leaders have to be given Western funded awards for its people to realise that the leaders are indeed democratic? According to Western democratic standards Mubarak, Ben Ali, Mobutu and Bongo were all labelled as democratic leaders.

The nationalist leaders have actually seen how the Western governments are trying to manipulate these liberation movements' genuine struggles for black empowerment by supporting stooges who fight for nonsensical rights.

Africans cannot continue to be lied to by various Western controlled and donor funded human right groups which propagate civil and political rights all to protect and safeguard their own selfish interests at the expense of Africa's economic, social and cultural rights.

International Human Rights Day is solely dedicated to the rule of law and the proper contact of democratic, free and fair elections on the African continent by some donor funded lawyers for human rights. These were the rights which a whole bunch of lawyers wanted Africans to embrace in marking International Human Rights Day.

Economic, social and cultural rights are deemed as irrelevant by this group of hypocrites and not therefore as important as free and fair elections and the protection of the so called human rights defenders.

What a humiliation and disgrace for these donor funded lawyers especially when we look at the millions of economically disempowered Africans and culturally alienated groups who also want their rights to be addressed. Rangu Nyamurundira an enlightened black lawyer (The Herald 23 November, 2011) was right in every sense when he argued that political rights take centre stage in the neo-liberal human rights discourse whilst ignoring economic rights which are as equally important as the other rights.

Liberation movements brought the very democratic rights that most Africans were being denied by the very white colonisers whom today through their black acolytes purporting as human rights defenders now come as democratic ambassadors wearing sheep's skins.

The neo-liberal intellectuals as argued by Panganai Kahuni (The Herald 6 December, 2011) fall in such a category of shameless Africans who are willing to sell their birth right for a few pieces of silver.

The liberation movements which dismantled white rule in Southern Africa should send a clear signal to the neo-colonialists that the revolutionary spirit is very much alive in the region and no matter what strategy the West might use, Southern Africa will show a lot of resistance. Resistance to Western neo-imperialism is a necessary right for every African. African space should be defended at all costs.

The African intellectual community should not be victims of deceit running aimlessly with the misleading doctrine that the West are genuinely interested in the democratisation agenda of Africa. African intellectuals should be the defenders of African social democracy which entails empowerment of the masses.

African academics are lacking the selfless dedication of pan-African intellectuals the likes of Steve Bantu Biko, Amilcar Cabral, and Frantz Fanon, Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah and many others. Opposition political parties are indispensable in any political system. Divergence and tolerance of political views is good in any democratic set up.

The greatest threat to liberation movements and nationalist parties in the 21st century are foreign funded opposition parties and civil society groups whose major aim is to destroy the pan-Africanist spirit by smuggling in Western democratic principles of individualism which are detrimental to pan-Africanist and nationalist goals centred on redistribution of resources to the masses. However, as long as imperialism is in existence, an independent African state must be a liberation movement/nationalist party in power, or that African state will not be truly independent.

Bowden B C Mbanje and Darlington N Mahuku are lecturers in International Relations, and Peace and Governance with Bindura University of Science Education.