[A-List] Washington is quite open in its intentions to overthrow the Mugabe government

["james daly" <james.irldaly@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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http://gowans.blogspot.com/

Expressions of imperialism within Zimbabwe
By Stephen Gowans

Zimbabwe’s Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Patrick 
Chinamasa on Friday denounced the US and Britain for their interference in 
Zimbabwe’s elections. At the same time, he decried the Morgan Tsvangirai 
faction of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change 
(MDC-T), and its civil society partner, the Zimbabwe Election Support 
Network (ZESN), as being part of a US and British program to reverse the 
gains of Zimbabwe’s national liberation struggle.

"It is no secret that the US and the British have poured in large sums of 
money behind the MDC-T’s sustained demonization campaign,” Chinamasa said. 
(1)

“Sanctions against Zimbabwe (were intensified) just before the elections,” 
while “large sums of money” were poured into Zimbabwe “by the British and 
Americans to bribe people to vote against President Mugabe.” (2)

The goal, Chinamasa continued, is to “render the country ungovernable in 
order to justify external intervention to reverse the gains of the land 
reform program." (3)

The justice minister went on to describe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai 
and his MDC “for what they are — an Anglo-American project designed to 
defeat and reverse the gains of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, to undermine 
the will of the Zimbabwean electorate and to return the nation to the dark 
days of white domination." (4)

The minister also described the ZESN as “an American-sponsored civil society 
appendage of the MDC-T.” (5)

Were they reported in the West, it would be fashionable to sneer at 
Chinamasa’s accusations as lies told to justify a crackdown on the 
opposition. But, predictably, they haven’t been. For anyone who’s following 
closely, however, the minister’s charges hardly ring false.

The ZESN is funded by the US Congress and US State Department though the 
National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and United States Agency for 
International Development (USAID). Its board is comprised of a phalanx of US 
and British-backed fifth columnists. (6)

Board member Reginald Matchaba Hove won the NED democracy award in 2006. 
Described by its first director as doing overtly what the CIA used to do 
covertly, the NED – and by extension the NGOs it funds -- are not 
politically neutral organizations. They have an agenda, and it is to promote 
US interests under the guise of promoting democratization. Hove is also 
director of the Southern Africa division of billionaire financier George 
Soros’ Open Society Institute, which has been involved in funding overthrow 
movements in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere. Soros also has an 
agenda: to open societies to Western profit making. Indeed, the board 
members of the ZESN comprise an A-list of overthrow activists, with multiple 
interlocking connections to imperialist governments and corporate 
foundations.

It doesn’t take long to connect Hove to left scholar Patrick Bond (of Her 
Majesty’s NGOs) and his Center for Civil Society. The Center is a program 
partner with the Southern Africa Trust, one of whose trustees is ZESN board 
member Reginald Matchaba Hove. The Center for Policy Studies, whose mission 
is to prepare civil society in Zimbabwe for political change (that is, to 
prepare it to overthrow the Zanu-PF government), is funded by the Southern 
Africa Trust, a partner of Bond’s Center for Civil Society. Other sponsors 
include the Soros, Ford, Mott, Heinrich Boll (German Green party), and 
Friedrich Ebert (German Social Democrats) foundations, the Rockefeller 
Brothers, the NED, South African Breweries and a fund established by the 
chairman of mining and natural resources company, Anglo-American. 
Significantly, Zimbabwe is rich in minerals. Zanu-PF’s program is to put 
control of the country’s mineral resources, as well as its land, in the 
hands of the black majority, depriving transnational mining companies, like 
Anglo-American, of control and profits. Everjoice Win, the former 
spokesperson for the ZESN, is on the advisory board of Bond’s center. The 
Center supports the Freedom of Expression Institute (FEI), which is funded 
by George Soros and the British government’s Westminster Foundation for 
Democracy (WFD). The FEI is a partner of the Media Institute of Southern 
Africa (also funded by the British government), whose director Rashweat 
Mukundu is a board member of the ZESN.

Bond co-authored a report with Tapera Kapuya, a fellow of ZESN sponsor, the 
NED. He also contributed to a report titled Zimbabwe’s Turmoil, along with 
John Makumbe and Brian Kagoro. The report was sponsored by the Institute for 
Security Studies, which is financed by the governments of the United States, 
Britain, France and Canada, the Rockefeller Brothers, and of course, the 
ubiquitous George Soros and Ford foundations. Makumbe has published in the 
NED’s Journal of Democracy, and is a former director of the Crisis in 
Zimbabwe Coalition (funded, not surprisingly, by the NED). The Coalition, 
like the Center for Policy Studies, is devoted to ousting the Mugabe 
government under the guise of promoting democracy, but in reality promotes 
the profits of firms like Anglo-American and the interests of US and British 
investors. Kagoro is a former coordinator of the Coalition. Significantly, 
the Coalition is a partner of the ZESN.

Add to this Bond’s celebrating the Western-trained and financed underground 
movements Zvakwana and Sokwanele as an “independent left” (7) and his 
co-authoring a Z-Net article on Zimbabwe with MDC founding member Grace 
Kwinjeh (8) (MDC leader Tsvangirai admitted in a February 2002 SBS Dateline 
program that his party is financed by European governments and corporations 
(9)), and it’s clear that Bond links up with the spider web of American and 
British-sponsored civil society appendages of the MDC-T.

Chinamasa’s clarification of the connections between the US and Britain and 
Zimbabwe’s civil society and opposition fifth columnists is a welcome relief 
from Western newspapers’ attempts to cover them up. The ZESN, despite being 
generously funded by the US through Congress and the State Department, is 
described by the Western media as “independent” while ZESN partner, the 
National Democratic Institute (NDI), is called “an international 
pro-democracy organization” (10) and “a Washington-based group.” (11) What 
it really is, is the foreign arm of the Democratic Party. The NDI receives 
funding from the US Congress (as well as from USAID and corporate 
foundations), which it then doles out to fifth columnists in US-designated 
“outposts of tyranny.” Only in the service of propaganda would the 
Democratic Party be called “a Washington-based group.” One wonders how 
Americans would have reacted to the British monarchy parading about 
post-revolutionary Washington as a “London-based” group – an “international 
good government” organization bankrolling an American NGO to monitor US 
elections? Would anyone be surprised if the leaders of the British-financed 
NGO were dragged off to jail, especially were its backers openly working to 
oust the government in Washington to restore the rule of the British 
monarchy? In Zimbabwe, the only surprise is that the Zanu-PF government hasn’t 
reacted with as much force as the Americans would have done under the same 
circumstances. That Zimbabwe’s government has tried to preserve space for 
the exercise of political and civil liberties in the face of massive hostile 
foreign interference is to be commended.

Washington is quite open in its intentions to overthrow the Mugabe 
government. Under the 2001 US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act 
“the President is authorized to provide assistance” to “support an 
independent and free press and electronic media in Zimbabwe” and “provide 
for democracy and governance programs in Zimbabwe.” (12) This translates 
into the president financing anti-Zanu-PF radio stations and newspapers and 
bankrolling groups opposed to Zimbabwe’s national liberation movement to 
inveigle Zimbabweans to vote against Mugabe.

“The United States government has said it wants to see President Robert 
Mugabe removed from power and that it is working with the Zimbabwean 
opposition…trade unions, pro-democracy groups and human rights 
organizations…to bring about a change of administration.” (13)

Last year, the US State Department acknowledged once again that it supports 
“the efforts of the political opposition, the media and civil society” in 
Zimbabwe through training, assistance and financing. (14) And the 2006 US 
National Security Strategy declares that “it is the policy of the US to seek 
and support democratic movements and institutions in every nation…with the 
ultimate goal of ending tyranny in…” North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Belarus 
and Zimbabwe. (15)

The goal of the overthrow agenda is to reverse the land reform and economic 
indigenization policies of the Zanu-PF government -- policies that are 
against the interests of the ruling class foundations that fund the fifth 
columnists’ activities. The chairman of Anglo-American finances Zimbabwe’s 
anti-Mugabe civil society because bringing Tsvangirai’s MDC to power is good 
for Anglo-American’s bottom line. Likewise, the numerous Southern African 
corporations that Lord Renwick of Clifton sits on the boards of stand to 
profit from the MDC unseating Zimbabwe’s national liberation agenda. Lord 
Renwick is head of an outfit called the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust (ZDT), also 
part of the interlocked community of imperialist governments, wealthy 
individuals, corporate foundations, and NGOs working to reverse Zimbabwe’s 
liberation struggle. The ZDT is a major backer of the MDC. (16)

Police raids on the offices of the ZESN and Harvest House, the headquarters 
of the MDC, seem deplorable to those in the West who are accustomed to 
elections in which the contestants all pretty much agree on major policies, 
with only trivial differences among them. But in Zimbabwe, the differences 
are acute – a choice between losing much of what the 14-year long national 
liberation war was fought for and settling for nominal independence (that is 
crying uncle, so the West will relieve the pressure of its economic warfare) 
or moving forward to bring the program of national liberation to its logical 
conclusion: ownership of the country’s land, resources and enterprises, not 
just its flag, by the black majority. In this, there is an unavoidable 
conflict between “a government which is spearheaded by a revolutionary 
party, which spearheaded the armed struggle against British imperialism” and 
“a party that was the creation of the imperialists themselves (that) has 
been financed the imperialists themselves.” (17)

It’s impossible to achieve independence from foreign control and domination 
without turmoil, disruption and fighting – not when the opposition and civil 
society are directed from abroad to serve foreign interests. Can Zimbabwe’s 
elections honestly be described as free and fair when the economy has been 
sabotaged by the West’s denying Harare credit and debt relief (18) and where 
respite from the attendant miseries is promised in the election of the 
opposition? Are elections legitimate when media are controlled by outside 
forces (19), and civil society and the opposition have been controlled by 
foreign powers?

Chinamasa’s complaints, far from being demagoguery, are real and justified. 
Zanu-PF’s decision to fight, rather than capitulate, ought be applauded, not 
condemned. Imperialism cannot be opposed without opposing the MDC and its 
civil society partners, for they too are imperialism.

1. Herald (Zimbabwe) April 26, 2008.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Michael Barker, “Zimbabwe and the Power of Propaganda: Ousting a 
President via Civil Society,” Global Research.ca, April 16, 2006. 
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8675
See also http://www.ned.org/dbtw-wpd/textbase/projects-search.htm and 
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Zimbabwe_Election_Support_Network
7. Stephen Gowans, “The Politics of Demons and Angels,” April 15, 2007, 
http://gowans.wordpress.com/2007/04/15/zimbabwe-and-the-politics-of-demons-and-angels/
8. Stephen Gowans, “The Company Patrick Bond Keeps,” March 24, 2008, 
http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/the-company-patrick-bond-keeps/
9. Rob Gowland, “Zimbabwe: The struggle for land, the struggle for 
independence,” Communist Party of Australia, 
http://www.cpa.org.au/booklets/zimbabwe.pdf . The MDC is also financed by 
the British government’s Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the 
Zimbabwe Democracy Trust, whose patrons include former British foreign 
secretaries and is headed by Lord Renwick of Chilton, vice-chair of 
investment banking at JPMorgan (Europe.)
10. The Globe and Mail (Toronto), April 26, 2008.
11. The Washington Post, April 26, 2008.
12. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s107-494
13. The Guardian (UK), August 22, 2002.
14. US Department of State, April 5, 2007.
15. http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/
16. “Zimbabwe ambassador: Self-determination is at the root of the 
 conflict,” FinalCall.Com News, April 22, 2008. 
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_4611.shtml
17. Ibid.
18. Under the US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001, “the 
Secretary of the Treasury shall instruct the United States executive 
director to each international financial institution to oppose and vote 
against--

(1) any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit, or 
guarantee to the Government of Zimbabwe; or

(2) any cancellation or reduction of indebtedness owed by the Government of 
Zimbabwe to the United States or any international financial institution.”

See http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s107-494

19. The same question can be asked of elections in Western liberal 
democracies, where the media are controlled by an interlocked community of 
hereditary capitalist families and corporate board members who share common 
economic interests inimical to those of the majority.


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