Zimpapers Logo

Jose Euardo Dos Santos

Stephen Mpofu
With relations between them so decidedly touch-and-go, it is probably no exaggeration to suggest that the West still has a marrowless bone to chew particularly with governments by liberation movements in Africa over the manner in which colonialists, and therefore imperialists, were shoed out of Africa, like thieving dogs, as the freedom struggle reached a scintillating peak with the wind of change toppling artificial white granite mountains as it buffeted its way across the continent.

Thus, Westerners appear to remain entrenched in a never-die-belief that they remain custodians of freedom and good governance in Africa god-fathered by their own holy democratic principles.

If that were not so, this continent would be witnessing helter-skelter efforts by western governments to observe elections in Africa as though those imperialists to-the-marrow boast a God-given mandate for supervising the way blacks and other small nations in the East should run their political economic affairs.

They behave like super invigilators making sure that teachers overseeing exams do not connive with their pupils to cheat or, better still doctor the results.

If the indefatigable zeal by the Westerners to referee political elections in Africa does not testify to a contemporary imperialism that regards blacks as political Lilliputians who must be shown the way to civilised standards, then what exactly does that unflinching determination point to?

In light of the above, therefore, the latest decision by Africans to speak out against the intrusion by Westerners into the continent’s political developments by watching over the way in which we blacks choose our leaders can only point to the maturation of politics on a continent rich especially in land and other natural resources such as wildlife, a draw card for foreign tourists.

The Angolan government of then President Jose Euardo Dos Santos declared boldy before that country’s recent polls that it opposed election monitoring by people from outside the African continent as the African Union and Sadc had both the ability and capability to monitor polls on the continent.

That the Angolan elections went on smoothly with the MPLA continuing to rule the country — despite reports filed by Angolan-based “veteran journalists” from the West purporting rampant corruption by top government officials there and suggesting that the opposition would revolt against the election results there – would appear potentially to point to opposition political parties in Africa, or at least some of them, as Trojan horses that smuggle Africa’s Western enemy into their own political arena to support those seeking power as stooges kow-towing to everything the racist former colonial masters stand for.

Just recently Sadc’s Executive Secretary, Dr Stergomena Lawrence Tax, put her foot down hard in support of growing sentiments in Africa against the

West’s continuing involvement in the continent’s political affairs through the monitoring of elections, as though Africans were the West’s designer babies.

She dismissed as out of hand criticism by the West of the credibility of Zimbabwe’s harmonised elections in 2013. She said; “If you go by that (criticism), then all elections (in Africa) won’t be credible.”

Western countries want opposition parties that they bankroll and which often seek to remove from power and at the behest of their masters, governments formed by liberation movements and of which the revolution remains the compass of their modus-operandi.

Africans, faced with a mammoth task of developing their countries socially and economically to reduce poverty which often triggers unrest and instability, must realise that the future lies not in the hands of those racists who once treated them as serfs in our own house and instead seek to close political ranks and forge ahead with pressing national agendas as one people with a common desire to shape their common destiny and into a brave new future for both themselves, their children and their children’s children.

That is the message this discourse wishes to communicate to the Zimbabwean masses and leaders on the eve of our harmonised elections next year. If we and other Africans elsewhere mutilate or kill one another over power and high profile political positions, instead of taking recourse to round table dialogue to iron out our political differences and in that way eschew dog-eat-dog politics over power for its own sake and pomposity for holding down big positions at the expense of suffering povo, we shall have only ourselves to blame for our own mess while the outside world laughs at our political backwardness.