In what appears to be another desperate attempt to discredit Zimbabwe’s elections due in 10 days, a British newspaper has exposed what it terms Mugabe’s plan to buy and rig the elections to retain power.
“Proof Mugabe buys elections: Astonishing documents show evidence of ‘neutralising’ of voters, millions paid for systematic rigging and smuggling of blood diamonds – to ensure tyrant, 89, clings to power,”– reads the headline in today’s Mail on Sunday a right-wing anti-Mugabe newspaper.
The paper ironically says it received massive documents about the plot from a senior intelligence officer frustrated with the barbarity and rigid discipline of Mugabe’s Marxist-influenced regime.
Apparently Mugabe has received massive funding from “named British, Chinese and African backers”.
The rigging includes:
Nikuv International Projects, an Israeli firm, is being paid $13 million (£8.5 million) to manipulate voter registration, counter ‘unfavourable’ results and ‘neutralise’ opposition votes.
The Chinese government is helping with ballot rigging, advising on voter intimidation and providing jamming equipment to silence independent radio stations.
Already, 45 534 youths have been trained and deployed across the country in armed militia to ‘stem resistance’, with another 7,343 undergoing training and ‘mass reorientation classes’ to be ready three days before polling.
Security forces are adamant that six ZANU-PF moderates ‘must be STOPPED’ from standing. One of the named politicians, Edward Chindori-Chininga, died last month in a suspicious car crash. His family say it was an assassination.
Funding for the covert campaign is coming from controversial diamond companies, the presidents of two African countries and prominent business figures from Britain, China and Zimbabwe.
Millions of dollars are being directed towards leaders of southern African countries providing independent election monitors to ‘drum up support for poll credibility before, during and after elections’.
The revelations by the Mail on Sunday, just like other reports from the Western media, are likely to drive people towards Mugabe than from him. The West’s open support for certain African candidates had driven voters towards those hated by the West because most people tend to believe they are the ones who will serve their interests while those loved by the West will serve Western interests.
A review of Helmut Danner’s book: End of Arrogance: Africa and the West – Understanding their Differences clearly shows this.
“The book generously castigates the West’s condescending attitude towards Africans, a stance that has made Africa bitter, suspicious and distrustful to the West,” the review says.
“The West’s attitude towards Africa is to a greater extent informed by its 1885 Berlin resolve to watch over the preservation and modernisation of Africans. The General Act of Berlin supports the narrative that the West knows best what is good for Africans. This narrative as seen in IMF and World Bank dictates has largely advanced the West’s socio-political and economic interests. It is therefore not in the best interest of the West to give it up. Doing this would be tantamount to committing suicide.”
According to British academic Julia Gallagher, Mugabe buggered British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Labour government because after demonising him and his regime, they could not understand why he still enjoyed local and regional support.
“As such there is a certain British inability to cope with moral ambiguity in Africa, which in turn helps to explain the government’s incoherence and incapacity over Zimbabwe,” she says.
“Once the British government had demonised Robert Mugabe and his regime, it was at a loss to understand remaining local and regional support for him. Instead, there was a tendency to avoid Zimbabwe altogether,” she says in a paper entitled: Healing the Scars? Idealising Britain in Africa, 1997- 2007.
Gallagher says one political researcher suggested that: “Blair found the whole subject (Zimbabwe and Mugabe) so painful that he wouldn’t allow officials to brief him…….If you’ve got an idealized view of Africa it (Zimbabwe) really buggers it up”.
Gallagher says there is a strong feeling within British political circles that Africa should be treated differently from the rest of the world. She says when British politicians interact with Africa they assume that their actions are above their own national interests, and they are engaged in a noble cause.
“The notion that Britain is engaged in a moral crusade in Africa derives from the popular and historically deep rooted conceptions of the continent as needy and helpless. The British role in this scenario is one of taking up the cause of the voiceless African poor in an honourable attempt to induce better governance behaviour from African leaders, who are usually described in either starkly good or more often bad terms. ..This advocacy assumes, of course, a curious sense of a right or facility to speak for Africans.”
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