In These New Times

Is Mugabe the new Bin-Laden, the ultimate incarnation of evil, the anti-Christ himself.?Given the intensity of the media campaign against him you could be forgiven for thinking so. Not a word about the West’s economic war against Zimbabwe; not a word about how the Brits reneged on the Lancaster House agreement; not a word about how the West manipulates and funds the opposition and those bodies such as NGOs which it styles as “civil society”. And all this from people who think they can just waltz into African countries and take what they want. Obviously they think Africa is a soft touch, at least compared to the Middle East where the waltz is proving more of a dance of death for London and Washington’s vain pretensions to world domination.

And perhaps this is the key to what is happening: after Iraq and Lebanon they need a war they can win and what would be a “damned little sideshow” in the Great War on Terror comes to dominate our lives daily hate sessions at 6 and 10 pm. Meantime Bin-Laden’s alleged comrades enjoy mere house arrest. As in Orwell’s 1984 things are getting messy and we need daily briefings as to who the enemie du jour precisely is.

But with the changing of the guard in London and Washington and Sarkozy, Europe’s leading neo-con madman, preaching to the Israelis about sharing Jerusalem with the Palestinians, it does seem that the war in terror is beginning to wind down to be replaced by a return to the doctrine of the City on the Hill whereby our influence follows from our sheer moral righteousness plus our global networks of subversion( the Soros, Brzezinski school). In other words, pure fantasy. Whether it can go as far as an actual invasion of Zimbabwe,by reviving the notion of the Heart of Darkness, they are constructing, at the very least, a diversion from the mess they are in in Iraq where the military leadership has already attempted, on its own initiative, to extricate itself.

Whatever the motivation behing this campaign may be, now is the moment to defend the sovereignty of Zimbabwe and counter the endless stream of lies. We particularly recommend Stephen Gowan’s blog What’s Left for in-depth analysis of the imperialist campaign against Mugabe.

Allegra Stratton(Guardian)

25th June, 2008

Attempts to mount regional pressure on Mugabe to call off Friday’s presidential election were hampered today when it emerged the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, would not be attending an emergency meeting of African leaders.

Tanzania, Angola and Swaziland have organised today’s emergency meeting in Swaziland of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) and insisted Mbeki had been invited.

Mbeki’s spokesman, Mukoni Ratshitanga, issued a statement this morning saying this was not the case. “We are not going to Swaziland. We have had no invitation to go to any meeting, especially Swaziland,” Ratshitanga said.

There has been wide international condemnation of the violence but the SADC is seen as the only body that can influence events in Zimbabwe.

Several of its member states have been flooded by millions of refugees fleeing the economic collapse of Zimbabwe.

The South African president has been negotiating between Mugabe and Zimbabwe’s opposition since last year but has been widely criticised for being ineffective and too soft on Mugabe.

Mugabe has refused to call off the vote. “They can shout as loud as they like from Washington and London and any other quarter. Our people and only our people will decide”, he told an election rally.

The 84-year-old Zimbabwe president has shrugged off mounting international pressure including Monday’s unprecedented UN security council condemnation of violence. It said a free and fair run-off election on Friday was impossible.

South Africa’s ruling African National Congress accused Mugabe of “riding roughshod over hard-won democratic rights” and said it could not remain “indifferent to the flagrant violation of every principle of democratic governance”.

The ANC leader, Jacob Zuma, said the situation in Zimbabwe was “out of control” and called for the UN and regional leaders to intervene urgently. Senegal’s president, Abdoulaye Wade, also called for the election to be postponed, saying there was no chance of a fair vote.

South Africa’s trades union confederation, Cosatu, said it would mobilise workers across the world to isolate Mugabe.

Tsvangirai, who has sought refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare, submitted a letter to the electoral commission formally pulling out of the election, and saying: “The violence, intimidation, death, destruction of property is just too much for anyone to dream of a free and fair election, let alone expect our people to be able to freely and independently express … themselves.”

Today Tsvangirai urged the UN to isolate Mugabe and called for a peacekeeping force in Zimbabwe.

Writing in the Guardian, Tsvangirai said Zimbabwe would “break” if the world did not come to its aid.

“We ask for the UN to go further than its recent resolution, condemning the violence in Zimbabwe, to encompass an active isolation of the dictator Mugabe,” he said.

“For this we need a force to protect the people. We do not want armed conflict, but the people of Zimbabwe need the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force.”

“Such a force would be in the role of peacekeepers, not troublemakers. They would separate the people from their oppressors and cast the protective shield around the democratic process for which Zimbabwe yearns.”