Zimpapers Logo

performance of its proxies in the electoral race in Zimbabwe, nothing could have prepared us for the blurting of an uninformed American president who was in South Africa, who shot his mouth off over the political situation here.

Zimbabweans do not fall for crocodile tears, are not titillated by any American pity parties nor are they interested in calls by Mr Barack Obama for so-called reforms.
And who would fall for the ruse that the Americans, who imposed sanctions against our country a decade ago, have suddenly turned from foe to friend to champion the rights of Zimbabweans to security sector reforms and other so-called reforms when they have failed to reform their own warped policies towards the country in particular and the continent in general.

These are the same people who have maintained economic sanctions against us and interfered with business here, not to mention their meddling in our efforts to derive maximum value out of our diamonds from Chiadzwa.

It is quite clear that Mr Obama’s visit has also been prompted by growing Sino-Africa relations that have made much of the West uncomfortable. The Chinese respect our sovereignty and appreciate that we are masters of our destiny whom they engage as equal partners.

We are sure the tour of Africa was meant to pat the backs of selected perceived influential leaders to promote American interests on the continent. Africa needs more than aid, more than Western economic dictatorship disguised as sanctions and conditional economic packages.

The US sees Tanzania, where Mr Obama was yesterday, as a country with largely untapped agricultural and mineral resources, and “Obama is trying to put forward the case for African consumers and their governments to look West rather than East.

“We have got enormous opportunity to unleash the next era of African growth.
I see Africa as the world’s next major economic success story and the United States wants to be a partner in that success,” Obama told a roundtable of businesspeople in Tanzania on Monday.

The horse and rider relations that the Americans favour do not qualify to be called partnerships.
We know that so-called partnership starts with influencing the choice of leadership so that the Americans have access to our resources.

We hope African countries unite to rebuff these American moves to stake a claim on our resources on their own terms as they seek to displace the Chinese.
We see this pre-occupation even in this country where all of a sudden Mr Obama professes to speak for Zimbabweans on the eve of a Zimbabwean election when all he seems to be doing is reading from one of the pages of MDC-T documents that it crafted in a bid to delay its defeat at the polls by continuously moving the dates of elections under the guise of pressing for key reforms.

Americans somehow think they know what is best for the poor African, or Third World citizen.
In the recent past they tried to influence the results of the elections in Kenya by seeking to project Uhuru Kenyatta as unelectable as if their Afghanistan experiment was not bad enough in terms of installing unpopular regimes.

The American president claims there is harassment of citizens in Zimbabwe in the run-up to elections that the so-called reforms would address.
Conveniently though, the need for such reforms has only become quite apparent to the MDC-T and the Americans a few months before elections.
Zimbabwe does not interfere with American political processes and we expect that non-interference to be reciprocated by the Americans who should know better than ruffle our feathers by treading upon our sovereignty.

We hope their hosts, the South Africans and later the Tanzanians knocked some sense into the Americans and told them to stay away and not behave as if they filed nomination papers for the upcoming elections.

The future leadership of this country lies with the Zimbabwean people who shall endorse a leadership of their choice, not American endorsements and lobbying for certain candidates that seek to push their agenda ahead of full control of what is Zimbabwe, our resources.

It is our hope that Zimbabweans are now aware of the nature of gangsters they are up against in the forthcoming elections.
It is a simple choice though; the Zimbabwean flag should continue to fly high instead of entrenching a regime whose cheer leaders wave a bigger flag with real power in the background while ours is just used to hoodwink our people.

As the election dates draw near, we should expect more of these messages from foreign powers who can no longer hide their true colours anymore and the more they seek to tell us how we should vote, the more we should gear up to reject their neo-colonial project with a resounding rejection of their agents.