Posted on 08/21/2002 5:02:02 PM PDT by Pokey78
America has issued its strongest attack yet on President Mugabe of Zimbabwe, describing him as an illegitimate leader who won power by fraud and saying it would encourage his people to "correct that situation".
Stopping just short of calling for a change of regime, Walter Kansteiner, the US government's Africa policy chief, said America does "not see President Mugabe as the democratically legitimate leader of the country".
Mr Kansteiner said Washington was working with countries in Africa and Europe to "encourage the body politic of Zimbabwe" to "correct that situation and start providing an environment that would lead to a free and fair election".
US support being offered to Zimbabwean aid organisations and human rights groups is reminiscent of the West's successful move to undermine Slobodan Milosevic by providing Serbian pro-democracy activists with money, computers and other aid.
In the strongest comments made by the Bush administration, Mr Kansteiner, the assistant secretary of state for Africa, said: "It is madness to arrest commercial farmers in the middle of a drought when they could grow food to save people from starvation."
Mr Kansteiner noted that, despite the drought, Zimbabwe's reservoirs were full, and commercial farms would have been able to feed the people of southern Africa if Mr Mugabe had not closed them all.
The British Government will be happy to allow Washington to take the lead on Zimbabwe, given Mr Mugabe's attempts to present the crisis as a struggle between native Africans and Britain, the former colonial power.
Mr Kansteiner, briefing reporters in Washington, was flanked by Andrew Natsios, the administrator of USAid, the American government aid agency.
In unusually angry comments, Mr Natsios, who was there to announce an additional 190,000 tons of food aid for southern Africa, attacked Mr Mugabe for handing white farms to members of his family, cabinet ministers and the military.
"It is a disgusting grab, where you're just basically stealing land from one group to [give to] another. The distinction here is, the group that's being stolen from are very good farmers, and the people they're giving the land to cannot farm anything," Mr Natsios said.
All US food aid would be distributed through independent organisations, church groups and charities, rather than the Zimbabwean government, Mr Natsios said.
Mr Kansteiner accused Mr Mugabe of a "gross violation" of aid policy, by distributing food to members of his own political party, rather than on the basis of need. America had "confirmed reports" of such abuses, notably in the worst affected southern areas of the country, he said.
In an apparent attempt to forestall the inevitable accusations from Mr Mugabe that he is being undermined by colonial forces, Mr Kansteiner played down the role of Western countries, saying he was working with South Africa, Botswana and Mozambique on isolating Mr Mugabe.
Washington was working with opposition groups and independent journalists within Zimbabwe, and with "a number of the European Community countries too", he said. He did not mention Britain.
America was not considering a general trade embargo, Mr Kansteiner said. "A trade embargo is a blunt instrument that could in fact affect the general population, and we do not want to do that."
Last night the Harare government accused the US and Britain of waging a "racist" campaign and using "bullying tactics" to isolate Mr Mugabe and maintain white economic dominance in southern Africa.
Why don't we keep our money and let the private sector do-gooders handle this.
The US has no business getting involved in other countries' problems.
(especially this place, they've brought their problems on themselves)
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First it was Rhodesia then SA now America paying the price of silence.
-A Capsule History of Southern Africa--
ZWNEWS.com - linking the world to Zimbabwe
... Books & Videos. Degrees in Violence: Robert Mugabe and the Struggle for Power
In Zimbabwe This book tells the story of Zimbabwe from the hopeful era of ...
MPR Books - Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African ...
Title: "Cry, the Beloved Country" - Topics: World/South Africa
One can only imagine what pain these unfortunate people would have been spared and what an infinitely more civilized place Rhodesia would have been if the world's Liberals had done the "right" thing instead of the "politically correct" thing!
But, that would have been expecting too much from Western Liberals. Doing the "right" thing is for them as out of character as a pig taking piano lessons. So, Liberalism continues to rush headlong into the dream world of it's own false suppositions - wreaking forseeable havoc on mankind and littering the landscape with tortured victims, dead bodies and shattered lives!
They'll have much to explain at the Final Judgment.
I believe that was Mr. Carter.
They'll have much to explain at the Final Judgment.
Perhaps if he paused his Frenching with Mr. Castro long enough to condider his handiwork he might be ready to compose an answer.
Aligned with Castro and Gaddafi - Mugabe Vows to Defend Zimbabwe from Western 'Bullies' *** HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - President Robert Mugabe vowed on Tuesday to defend his government against Western "bullies" and said Zimbabwe's economic recovery hinged on land redistribution. In a 40-minute speech to open the new parliamentary session, Mugabe made no direct mention of tighter EU sanctions, his media crackdown or any plans for his ZANU-PF party to resume talks with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Strongly defending his government's right to take possession of white farmers' land, he ignored a boycott of his speech by MDC legislators, who make up just over a third of the assembly.
Outside the southern African state's parliament, there was no sign of a planned protest march by pro-democracy activists after police warnings that the demonstration would be crushed. Mugabe said Zimbabwe, in the grips of its worst economic and political crisis since independence from Britain in 1980, was facing "considerable challenges" from what he called "British machinations" and a regional drought.
The economy is in its fourth year of recession with record high inflation and unemployment and a severe food shortage. "Our sovereignty is constantly under attack from the bullying states ... which seek to use their political and economic prowess to achieve global hegemony," Mugabe said. At 78, Mugabe is a left-winger who counts Cuba's Fidel Castro and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi among his foreign allies. Monday, the European Union extended a blacklist of Zimbabwean officials subjected to a visa ban and asset freeze. The move is aimed at piling more pressure on the country whose human rights record it says has deteriorated since Mugabe's re-election in March. ***
Rumsfeld Bluntly Warns Russia Ties To Iraq Will Hurt It***"What that tells people in business is that is not an environment that is hospitable for investment, that it is not a place that they want to invest....To the extent that the country is saying to world that they want to be known as close personal friends to Saddam Hussein, and Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Il and those folks, it sends a signal that is harmful to them," Rumsfeld said. In another part of his remarks, Rumsfeld also included Libya in the list of states he was warning Russia not to do business with.***
Gadaafi to supply Mugabe with death squads?***Relations between Mugabe and Gadaafi have been warm for some time but it is only in the last year, as Zimbabwe's shortage of foreign exchange has caused repeated fuel cut-offs that Mugabe has several times flown to Tripoli to plead with Gadaafi for deliveries on credit. Gadaafi, who has despaired of his efforts to play a leadership role in the Arab world, has begun to use his financial muscle to make interventions right across black Africa where he has made Zimbabwe a special case, advancing Mugabe a loan of $100 million.
He then made a special trip to last month's OAU summit in Lusaka - the first such summit he had attended since 1977 - to give all-out support to Mugabe's land-grabbing and anti-white policies. So large was the Libyan delegation that Gadaafi even upstaged leaders like ex-President Mandela. African leaders anxious to earn some of his largesse were even willing to overlook the fact that before Gadaafi used any chair or microphone an African had previously used, his bodyguards would rush forward to disinfect it. "It's amazing", said one Zimbabwean farmer who did not wish to be named, "how black or Arab racism gets overlooked. Whenever we hear racists being denounced it always means whites. But on Heroes Day we had to listen to (Vice President) Joe Msika telling us that whites were not even humans."
From Lusaka Gadaafi drove down to Harare in a 150 car motorcade, his army of amazon women bodyguards virtually taking over Harare. He publicly embraced Mugabe's views in an extraordinary TV appearance in which he announced that Africa was for the Africans and that whites must go back to Europe and only be allowed to stay on as servants. It was also announced that Gadaafi had promised Mugabe $586 million in fuel supplies and had made a $900,000 election contribution to the funds of Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party.***
Gaddafi's designs and control of Zimbabwe and Africa***Gadaafi, who has despaired of his efforts to play a leadership role in the Arab world, has begun to use his financial muscle to make interventions right across black Africa where he has made Zimbabwe a special case, advancing Mugabe a loan of $100 million. In effect Gadaafi seems to be making a bid to save Mugabe which, if successful, would create a virtual Libyan client state at the far end of Africa. Already there is evidence of direct Libyan involvement in the violence which racked Zimbabwean farms in the last ten days. ***
Yes, it is madness and you're damned if you do and dammed if you don't. Any food aid will only go to Mugabe's cronies and the starving will just be shown to get more food for Mugabe's cronies.
And why the hell should Americans be required to feed this once most prosperous country because no Zimbabwean can take out a madman? Just because he is a black African madman doesn't make him any different from a little white Hitler. Sigh.........nobody took out Hitler either, he killed himself finally when his country was in complete ruin.
___________________________________________________________________________
An example of why we MUST NOT lift the embargo (give LOANS) on Castro.
"Owning land for Britain" means supporting civil society, or talking to human rights groups critical of Zanu PF, or voting for an opposition party. Mugabe showered praise on his ruling party youth militia, now commonly known here as the "Green Bombers". Their fraudulent claims to be ex- guerrillas from the 1972-80 bush war in Rhodesia were exposed in the early days of farm invasions, after the February 2000 constitutional referendum. It was the crushing defeat of Zanu PF in that referendum that caused Mugabe to unleash country-wide violence under cover of agitation for land reform in order to ensure a semblance of victory in the June 2000 parliamentary elections and the March 2002 presidential poll.
This campaign of terror Mugabe calls the "Third Chimurenga" or civil war. "The Third Chimurenga has yielded a New War Veteran: these young men and women who slugged it out on the farms in support of their elder veterans...We are not apologetic about our national youth service programme...it is mandatory, it is national, it links to the politics and defence of our country…It seeks to and will build a new national cadre who is self respecting, adequate, assertive and patriotic and thus does not apologise for being black," he said. Mugabe sees his enemy as "White-ism" - the route `"through which the forces of imperialism and neo-colonialism enter."
Mugabe either does not know that it is impossible to run commercially viable farms on the lord-and-vassal system he is imposing, or feels that the economic costs are more than offset by the blessings of "political stability" (i.e. he gets to stay in power until he can hand over to his children). Commercial agriculture here only prospered by being keenly responsive to world market trends. In the 20 years since the state monopoly, the Minerals Marketing Corporation, was created, millions have been lost through the tardiness of bureaucrats in responding to potential orders - they are paid for loyalty, not for initiative.
Doris Lessing, a founder member of Rhodesia's long defunct Communist party, concedes that her father's Kermanshah Farm at Banket (one of the 2,900 now being seized, although her family sold up 60 years ago) was hopelessly sub-economic at 400 hectares - and those were the days of ox-ploughing. To maintain competitive edge in an age of mechanisation, farmers need security of tenure, title deeds that can be lodged with financial institutions against loans.***
Political correctness is going to hang us all. And the Western suicide by PC is going to also do great damage to everyone else.
BUMP!
Zimbabwe -- Libyan spy spills the beans***LIBYAN spy Yousef Murgham, summarily deported from Zimbabwe last week, has revealed startling details of Libya's growing economic and military stranglehold on Zimbabwe, which is immersed in its worst crisis for survival. Murgham's details are revealed in a letter he wrote to President Robert Mugabe before his abrupt deportation to Libya last Thursday amid accusations he was engaged in activities which threatened Zimbabwe's security and interests.***
Not even a good try, Mugabe, you white-hating rat bastard.
When it comes to bullying, hatred, racism, and outright theft, then Mugabe.........you wrote the bloody book.
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