Meeting MDGs, fighting sanctions one struggle President Mugabe
President Mugabe

President Mugabe

Obi Egbuna Jnr Simunye

One of the fundamental differences between capitalist and imperialist nations and the countries they conquered and continue to rape and plunder, is what they perceive to be rights and privileges.

As the accurate history of Zimbabwe’s Third Chimurenga is being written, the victories of President Mugabe and ZANU-PF will not be fully appreciated unless we recognise that all the accomplishments were achieved while warding off US-EU imperialism’s regime change efforts.

Because African nations with a revolutionary pedigree celebrate their heroic battles for political independence, their leadership must ensure the ideological values that served as the cornerstones of the liberation struggle continue to guide the nation as they address the political, economic and social challenges they face today.

Discussing Zimbabwe’s efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals in 2012, President Mugabe stated: “Progress has been made on some MDGs while challenges militate against the realisation of other targets . . . The MDGs promote a solid framework for consensus building among parliamentarians, Government policy makers, development partners, civil society organisations and the citizenry for social development and mobilisation in the construction of national narrative and regional alliance.”

One of the fundamental differences between capitalist and imperialist nations and the countries they conquered and continue to rape and plunder is what they perceive to be rights and privileges.

Those who fail to examine Zimbabwe’s fight to meet its MDGs in isolation from the struggle to lift US-EU sanctions can never claim to have an objective account of the political situation on the ground.

The MDGs are as follows: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve mental health, combat HIV-AIDS and malaria and other diseases and ensure environmental sustainability.

When the US Supreme Court voted last week to uphold the Affordable Care Act which many consider the crowning achievement of the Obama administration’s legislative agenda, it appears both Democrats and Republicans realised using President Obama as a mouthpiece on the world stage would be difficult if they didn’t at least give the appearance the poor and downtrodden had their empathy.

During his six-year tenure as President Obama has come to the realisation that US imperialism cannot impose its will on leaders and countries that they perceive to be enemy states, as long as their flaws and contradictions stand out Muslims-like in the Vatican or Christians in Mecca.

According to the hunger and poverty fact sheet of the organisation Feeding America in 2013 45,3 million people (14 percent of the population) in the US were in poverty, 26,4 million people between the ages of 18-64 were in poverty,14,7 million children live in poverty and 6,5 million children are in extreme poverty and 4,2 million senior citizens aged 65 and above live in poverty.

The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population, however, it has 25 percent of the entire planet’s prison population. In 2011 the UN condemned the isolation of prisoners as a form of torture, yet the US has more prisoners in isolation than any other country in the world.

We have our comrades in Louisiana State Penitentiary commonly referred as the Angola 3 – Robert Hillary King, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace. King was released on October 1 2013, re-indicted on October 3 2013, and died on October 4 2 of the same year before he could be re-arrested.

It would be absolutely criminal to discuss the US Prison Industrial Complex and exclude the private corporations, who, based on their actions, make so-called African-Americans recognise the connection between yesterday’s slave ships and today’s prison cells.

The most ruthless aspect of this dynamic is the laundry list of corporate powerhouses involved like Walmart, Eddie Bauer, Koch Industries, Victoria’s Secret, Nintendo, Chevron Corporation and the Bank of America. Before Africans living outside the US can grasp this harsh reality, the figure that looms over this particular discussion is that so-called African Americans make up one million of the 2,3 million inmates incarcerated in the US.

What the US-EU regime change agenda has caused President Mugabe and ZANU-PF to do is present Zimbabwe’s case to the world in two phases, life before and after the sanctions were imposed on the country and its people.

For so-called African Americans to grasp and understand what President Mugabe and Zimbabwe truly represent, all they have to do is become more aggressive and uncompromising when making parallels between our struggles in the US and Southern Africa.

This year marks the fifth anniversary of Mrs Shirley Sherrod being forced to resign as the Georgia State director of Rural Development for the US Department of Agriculture for supposedly making racially sensitive remarks while addressing the NAACP. Mrs Sherrod was the first so-called African American to serve in this capacity.

The remarks that led to Mrs Sherrod’s forced resignation were based on an edited video of her address to the NAACP by the rightwing journalist and Tea Party apologist Andrew Breithart.

After it was discovered that Mrs Sherrod’s remarks were taken out of context, in an effort to save face, the USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack was forced to apologise and offered our sister a new position. To her credit Mrs Sherrod turned down the position, which sent a statement to President Obama personally, that US blood money is not the answer for political recklessness. The decision to terminate Mrs Sherrod in the first place had the complete blessing of President Obama, who along with the NAACP was forced to apologise for jumping to the wrong conclusion.

For Mrs Sherrod being shafted by opportunists and racists in the Democratic Party was nothing new. Between the years 1969 and 1985, Mrs Sherrod and her husband Reverend Charles Sherrod helped develop New Communities, which was a 5 700-acre land trust and farm collective in southwest Georgia. As a result of droughts and the inability to secure loans, the farm was forced to shut down. It was none other than the white supremacist and Democratic governor Lester Maddox, who prevented development funds for the project from entering the state. When it comes to true land empowerment, whether its President Mugabe in Zimbabwe or Shirley Sherrod in southwest Georgia, it appears President Obama’s natural instinct is stand on the side of white supremacy and imperialism.

To the dismay of the US-EU alliance, their illegal and racist sanctions have ignited a new level of unity and patriotism in Zimbabwe, which has resulted in various practical measures to ease the burden of the suffering and chaos the sanctions leave in their midst.

When we analyse the NEDPP (National Economic Development Priority Programme) and Zim-Asset (Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation) the work ethic of Zimbabweans who believe in indigenisation is on full display.

In the field of education, Africans worldwide must recognise the sterling example of the Midlands State University in Gweru which at the moment has 21 000 students, whose expansion ironically required using land that once belonged to the former Prime Minister of Rhodesia, Ian Smith.

Obi Egbuna Jnr is the US correspondent to The Herald and a US-based member of ZIMCUFA. His email is [email protected]

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