Zimpapers Logo

Joram Nyathi, Spectrum
An askari sat in the Oval Office at the White House for eight years, and did not want to disappoint the white establishment standing guard over his every action. And he made sure he left a lasting imprint and legacy of destruction in Africa Enigma and controversy enter America’s White House today. Out goes an askari, with his loathed routes traced to Africa within a generation. That’s Donald Trump and Barack Obama respectively. Yet for better or for worse, we have to buck the trend and trust the devil we don’t know, a white maverick at that.

Just to show the sense of betrayal and revulsion we feel at what we thought was a good omen when one of our own took command of the sole superpower and we expected him to lead efforts to remove the sanctions curse imposed on our nation by one George W Bush, a white American.

It is a curse which has ravaged our nation for nearly 17 years. A small nation which can never in a thousand years be feared to pose an economic, let alone an existential, threat to a global military superpower. But that’s the world of bullies and hypocrites we live in. And Obama disappointed.

But Obama, as we shall show, has kindred spirits in Zimbabwe, who will miss sorely his Executive Orders, regardless of their damage or lack of merit.

Wikipedia says an askari was a local soldier serving in the armies of the European colonial powers in Africa, especially in east Africa. That’s where our esteemed Obama who broke the proverbial political ceiling of the racist white world traces his roots from. The askari tag is most apposite regardless of whether formal colonial rule ended in east Africa in the 1960s.

An askari sat in the Oval Office at the White House for eight years, and did not want to disappoint the white establishment standing guard over his every action. And he made sure he left a lasting imprint and legacy of destruction in Africa, to demonstrate his bona fides as a good, veritable askari in the service of white America against Coltrane Chimurenga and his pro-Africa movement.

To an askari, the master’s problems become his own; he must carry the burden of resolving them, even against his own people. That Obama did with distinction. But then let’s deal briefly with the in-coming devil we don’t know.

In practice we have no reason to trust Trump any better than we were foolish to believe Obama would behave differently from Bush. The sole reason Trump might be better than either of his two predecessors, even against pressure from the establishment, is that he appears, for the little that can be discerned from his unpredictable rants, to prefer an inward looking America. Trump wants to make America great again: he wants American jobs back, a strong and growing economy, to limit foreign immigration, to revive the mining sector and a better health delivery system. That’s according to him.

Trump doesn’t appear to have much interest in Africa. He has his sights on Asia, China in particular, where he seems to have started badly, not only on the “One China” policy regarding Taiwan but also threatens to ignite a trade war which could pan out badly for the stuttering global economy. That’s what makes him a maverick, a capitalist trying to promote protectionist policies. He wants to limit imports from China, which he accuses of tampering with its own currency.

Trump has also caused ructions in Europe. Nato is uneasy. The United States has always provided a protective shield over its Nato allies. The result has been an unnecessarily aggressive if not provocative stance against Russia by the Allies, particularly eastern Europe. Our askari, one Obama, even urged Nato members to increase their military budgetary allocations to 2 percent of GDP. His administration witnessed an increase in American military presence in Europe and deliberate rupturing of “agreements” not to encroach on to Russian spheres of influence in eastern Europe.

Trump has stressed that he wants Nato members and Japan and South Korea to pay for American protection, which might force them to increase their military budgetary allocations. He, however, differs from his predecessors in that he doesn’t want a confrontational relationship with Russia, preferring cooperation instead. It is something that’s rattled the establishment to a red rage. They view Vladimir Putin as a mortal enemy.

They hate more the fact that Trump wants to cooperate with Russia in the Middle East to destroy the Islamic State and American founded, funded and armed jihadists fighting the legitimate Syrian government of Asad. They hate that Russia stopped America from executing a Libya in Syria, to be able to access keys to its gushers. That is why our askari leaves the White House a bitter man, slapping Russia with a fresh regime of sanctions even as he has one foot on the doorstep, just to complicate matters for incoming Trump.

Talking of Libya, since early last year Obama has repeatedly acknowledged the biggest mistake of his presidency was lack of planning for the aftermath of Muammar Gaddafi’s ouster that left the country spiralling into chaos and coming under threat from violent extremists.

—-Obama’s gift to Zimbabwe—-

Reflecting on his legacy in a Fox News interview, Obama said his “worst mistake” was “probably failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya”. He tried to blame his partners in crime, David Cameron (Britain) and Nicholas Sarkozy (France), the former for getting distracted and the latter for trying to advance France’s interests in the region, without realising that once they used him to achieve their objectives they didn’t want to be associated with an askari, a creature forever inferior.

And inferior is the askari. He reckons his “worst mistake” was post-Gaddafi murder. No sir. History will record that you are the first and last black American president to orchestrate the killing of a fellow African, a sitting head of state. You will take your dirty hands dripping with the blood of Gaddafi to your white grave.

Listen to this askari logic: he acknowledges there was no plan for a post-Gaddafi Libya but still claims it was the “right thing to do”. What was Gaddafi’s crime and how many Libyans have followed his corpse to his unmarked grave? Why are there more Libyans dying trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea in democratic Libya than they did under the Gaddafi dictatorship?

Supposing he was in charge of anything at the White House, what post-Assad plans did he have for Syria? What regime change, post-Mugabe plans did he have for Zimbabwe? We are not foolish to accept this insane “shoot-first, ask-questions-later” policy. What post-Saddam Hussein plans did America have for Iraq?

This is my point about Trump: China overtook America way back in 2009 as a major trading and investment source for Africa. It is estimated that Chinese exports to Africa hit $103 billion in 2015. America’s were a niggardly $27 billion. China is investing in physical infrastructure to aid Africa’s industrialisation pursuant to its Agenda 2063. America is selling the continent an opium called democracy while crippling our economies with sanctions.

In short, America has lost the competition to China, and seems to have given up. Which is why I would rather trust the devil I don’t know in Trump. The only reason we shall continue to have America in our shores under Trump is to deal with the results of its destabilisation policies which have given rise to terrorists of all shades – from Al Qaeda to ISIS and everything in between – all trying to locate nursing cells in the region.

Africom has little to do with trade nor Bush and Obama’s stale opium but everything to do with trying to protect American interests from the jihadists America has sired. It is part of the “war on terror”.

Last week, as a show of a well-groomed askari, Obama extended sanctions imposed by Bush on Zimbabwe in 2001 “in conformity with Washington’s national emergency policies”. A whole president must just conform, he can’t assess for himself in what way little Zimbabwe can constitute an America national emergency! Thank God he is gone.

But he got praises for his final insult to Zimbabwe from fellow askaris. A senior MDC-T official applauded Obama for extending the sanctions. “It is a very good move but sadly these sanctions have not had the impact that was expected by the people because our understanding was that the sanctions were a travel ban but you will find that Mugabe is all over New York,” said the official.

It’s really sad and this is the tragedy of our opposition. Dozens of companies which employ Zimbabweans are placed under sanctions and the main opposition party in the country fools its supporters that it is only President Mugabe who has been banned from travelling to New York! And why does Mugabe still travel to New York if he is the sole target of sanctions, and not the Zimbabwean economy? No wonder sane Zimbabweans have consistently spurned these askaris who must always “conform” to American diktat.