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Expressions of imperialism within Zimbabwe
By Stephen Gowans
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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.
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