Mnangagwa blasts the West for threatening Africa’s right to self-determination

In our case, we had Geneva in 1976, Malta and Nairobi a year later. Above all, we had the notorious Internal Settlement and sham elections it begot, between 1978 and 1979. Because of our strong grounding in patriotism and genuine nationalism, all these tricks failed. Genuine settlement only came in 1979, through the Lancaster House Conference during which our rights were asserted and defended. This is the Independence we enjoy and cherish to this day.

Throughout Struggles for African Liberation, western governments led by the United States of America, never supported us. With the exception of a few Nordic Countries which offered humanitarian assistance, western governments instead armed the racist colonial regimes in Angola, Mozambique, the then Rhodesia, Namibia and in South Africa. They defended their kith and kin while putting their vested interests above our freedoms.

To them African nationalism is an evil force. Here in Zimbabwe, the United States of America applied to be exempt from applying United Nations sanctions against UDI Rhodesia in order to continue to extract chrome from our country, which she regarded as a strategic mineral. Millions of tonnes of our chrome were extracted and stockpiled in the US.

Proceeds from the sale of our chrome were used to buy arms used by the Smith regime against us. It was the same story with many other western countries whose transnational companies were and still are active on our Continent. They continue to exploit our non-renewable resources.

The arms that liberated us came from Africa, and from progressive countries of the world, primarily those who comprised the then Eastern Bloc. To the liberated African country, we were never made to pay for those arms, both before and after our freedoms.

It remains a great gesture of compassion and solidarity unmatched by any other in human history. By contrast, western interests which had depleted our finite natural resources for nothing in return, and for over a century of occupation, have never paid reparations to us. Not even a dime for all those years of resource pillage.

Nor have they been forthcoming in assisting us with the development which they denied us during those long years of colonial occupation. Instead, many African nations continue to be trapped by them through debts which cannot be repaid.

In our case, the same countries which robbed us of our freedoms and our finite resources, have gone further to slap us with undeserved and illegal, punitive sanctions for recovering our God-given land. This is how they have chosen to repay us. Nothing could be more cynical, indeed worse than adding insult to long injury.

Against such persistent efforts to hamstring our sovereign Independence, the same countries which supported us in our struggles for national Independence, have now come back to join us in gainful partnerships in the second phase of our Struggle, that of Economic Development.

Apart from generous grants, interest-free or light loans, they have now come back to the continent they helped liberate as new, non-traditional investors. Read against time and historical circumstances, they are new and late comers in this domain, unlike western interests which have been exploiting our Continent even well before its formal occupation.

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