Over the past two decades, the world could have been hoodwinked by Western governments’ imposition of targetted sanctions on then Zimbabwean president Robert Gabriel Mugabe’s tyrannical regime, on the pretext of human rights abuses and electoral fraud.
However, was that the real reasons for these targetted sanctions on Mugabe and members of his ruthless regime?
Are Western governments the torch-bearers of human rights and democracy, as they would want the world to believe – or are there some sinister motives behind their foreign policies?
The answer is quite simple.
Western countries have never been, and still are not, interested in democracy and human rights in other countries, but have other ulterior motives.
Barely two years after Mugabe assumed power in a newly independent Zimbabwe, he was already busy massacring tens of thousands of innocent and unarmed men, women and children in the Midlands and Matebeleland provinces – in the worst heinous crimes against humanity ever committed in the country.
At the same time, Mugabe was being invited to most Western capitals, where he was bestowed with numerous accolades on his supposedly examplary leadership – which was characterized by killing tens of thousands of his own people.
The answer was very obvious…as long as Black people were busy killing each other, that would not be a problem for Western countries – in fact, that would be good for business in arms sales.
It is also understood that Mugabe – who was poised to lose the country’s first post-independence – elections to fellow liberation movement ZAPU led by Joshua Nkomo – fraudulently ‘won’ due to British rigging.
Mugabe had apparently promised the British that their interests, including businesses and farms owned by Whites, would be protected from being nationalised.
Mugabe broke his previous promise to protect British interests, when he embarked on his chaotic and violent land redistribution exercise – which resulted in the expropriation of White-owned farms.
In spite of having gotten away with massacring over twenty thousand mostly isiNdebele unarmed people, he would not get away with taking White-owned land in Zimbabwe!
Fast forward to November 2017, Mugabe was ousted in a military coup d’etat, which ushered in the man who was the security minister during the isiNdebele massacres – Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa – as the new president.
Did Mnangagwa promise them to continue with the promise that Mugabe had made, and later broken?
I think not!
This would certainly not be the first time that Western countries have militarily removed governments, predominantly for business interests.
So why would the British and her allies not be behind the coup d’etat in Zimbabwe – not, ironically, to restore democracy by forcefully removing a blood thirsty tyrant – but, for purely commercial interests?
Nonetheless, the biggest circumstantial evidence which ‘proves’ the British have never been, and are still not, interested in democracy and human rights, is the apparent lackluster approach to the re-emergence of violence against the opposition in Zimbabwe soon after the 30 July 2018 harmonized elections.
It is reported that at least six innocent and predominantly unarmed people were shot and killed by the military in Harare on 1 August 2018 – during a protest against perceived electoral fraud by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).
A number of pposition activists are said to be in hiding, as a direct result of this alleged re-emergence of violent repression of the people – an unfortunate legacy from the Mugabe regime continuing into the so-called ‘new dispensation’.
They have never come out openly and firmly to denounce these acts of violence against perceived opposition supporters, nor have they threatened further sanctions if this did not stop.
The British and Western countries would rather respond to these acts of violence in a similar fashion to how they reacted towards the November 2017 coup d’etat – with acceptance!
It is quite clear that Mugabe and his predecessor and former right-hand man Mnangagwa, are no different at all when it comes to issues of democracy and human rights, but the British would rather look aside when it comes to the latter as he has assured them to protecting their business interests.
…much the same way they looked aside when Mugabe was busy massacring tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children in the 1980s.
Zimbabweans, who are truly interested in democracy and human rights, need to know and accept that we are all alone – and we need to stand up for our rights, in a legal and democratic manner.
The Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa), and the African Union (AU), have long since betrayed and abondoned the people of the continent, by preferring to band together as leaders and tyrants.
We should be wary of being enticed by the West into believing that they are willing to help us, as they will throw us off the cliff’s edge!
As long as it is Blacks killing Blacks, they would not give a hoot – so long as Western interests are protected.
The people of Zimbabwe, whilst maintaining peace and unity – as we are equally suffering and oppressed, no matter which party we belong to, including ZANU PF, or even apolitical – need to also band together and bravely stand for our democatic and human rights.
No matter what those tyrants in power throw at us, with the tacit blessings of the British and their allies, we need to fearlessly remember the true sacrifices of those who came before us, and paid with their lives their desire for a genuinely free and fair Zimbabwe.
Where everyone is equal, and where we all equally benefit from the country’s wealth and resources without any ‘chef’, where people are not driven by fear of those supposedly there to protect them, and everyone’s voice – no matter how opposed – is heard and respected.