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10TH AFRICAN FEST ANNIVERSARY
SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 2008
VOLUNTEER FOR AAM'S UBUNTU MENTORING PROGRAM
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"Rights activists put much of the blame on the West... It seems Washington and European governments will accept even the most dubious election so long as the 'victor' is a strategic or commercial ally," Kenneth Roth, executive director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, said in a recent report.
We fully understand the deleterious role the WEST is playing in the destabilization of Africa. But that's because we aren't united. We are a balkanized continent, believe or not, and the Nansara is adept at fishing in troubled waters. Let's not delude ourselves: as long as Africans remain at each other's throat, the OYIBO will always take advantage of our foibles. That's what they do best.
~PEACE~
PETER W.VAKUNTA
DEPARTMENT OF FRENCH AND ITALIAN
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON
602 VAN HISE HALL
1220 LINDEN DRIVE
MADISON WI 53706-1525
U.S.A
Office 608 262 4067
Home 608 442 6089
Cell 608 381 0407
"The day will come when history will speak... Africa will write its own history... it will be a history of glory and dignity." - Patrice Lumumba
----- Original Message -----
From: Aggo Akyea <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Friday, July 4, 2008 3:43 pm
Subject: West condemns Mugabe, ignores other Africa despots
To: [log in to unmask]
> **********************************************************
>
> 10TH AFRICAN FEST ANNIVERSARY
>
> SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 2008
>
> VOLUNTEER FOR AAM'S UBUNTU MENTORING PROGRAM
>
> CONTACT "[log in to unmask]" FOR MORE INFO
>
> RENEW YOUR AAM MEMBERSHIP FOR $25!!!!
>
> MAIL YOUR CHECK TO AAM, P. O. Box 1016, MADISON, WI 53701
>
> **********************************************************
>
> West condemns Mugabe, ignores other Africadespots
>
> By MICHELLE FAUL
> Associated Press
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080704/ap_on_re_af/africa_s_silence
>
> Nigeria. Rwanda. Uganda. Ethiopia. Gabon. Robert Mugabe's regime in
> Zimbabwehas plenty of competitors for the title of "least democratic
> in Africa."
>
> But while he has been singled out for condemnation by the West,
> leaders of other autocratic states in Africahave largely been able to
> avoid sanctions and isolation. Many have friends in Western capitals.
> Or play a strategic role in the war against terrorist groups. Or sit
> on oil.
>
> With corrupt and authoritarian governments close to the norm on the
> continent, it is not surprising that African leaders ignored Western
> demands that they censure Zimbabwe's president at a summit this week
> and some welcomed him with hugs.
>
> As Mugabe himself has asked: How many African leaders can point a
> clean finger at him? How many held a better election than his one-man
> runoff that followed a campaign of violence against his foes that
> induced the opposition leader to quit the race?
>
> While some African leaders have condemned Mugabe, many admire him for
> thumbing his nose at the West and pointing out its perceived
> hypocrisies, like the Bush administration appealing for human rights
> in Zimbabwewhile facing criticism over the U.S.prison at Guantanamo.
>
> "We Africans should learn a lesson from this," Gambian President
> Yahya Jammeh said in praising Mugabe's election to a sixth term.
>
> "They (the West) think they can dictate to us and this is not
> acceptable. Africans should stand for Zimbabwe. After all, what did
> the West do for Africa?" said Jammeh, a former army colonel who seized
> power in a 1994 coup.
>
> Just a decade ago, much of Africawas gripped by hope as a wave of
> democracy swept the continent.
>
> It began with the extraordinary sight of protesters in the West
> African state of Benintaking hammers to a statue of Lenin. Within
> three years, 26 countries had held multiparty presidential elections
> on a continent known for one-man rule.
>
> When elections in South Africaended white minority rule in 1994,
> there was not one single-party state left in sub-Saharan Africa.
> Western nations tied aid to free elections and severed ties with
> dictators they had supported in the name of the Cold War fight against
> communism.
>
> But the optimism, backed by theories that opening socialist economies
> to the free market would help pull Africaout of poverty, has
> evaporated and the democracy movement has stalled.
>
> Today, only 21 states, including Botswanaand South Africa, hold
> relatively free elections. Many of the remaining 31 are ruled by
> despots, including many offering the illusion of democracy with
> elections like those Mugabe held.
>
> Rights activists put much of the blame on the West.
>
> "It seems Washingtonand European governments will accept even the
> most dubious election so long as the 'victor' is a strategic or
> commercial ally," Kenneth Roth, executive director of New York-based
> Human Rights Watch, said in a recent report.
>
> Among countries he singled out as sham democracies are oil-rich
> Chadand Nigeria; Uganda, whose President Yoweri Museveni's friendship
> with President Bush has shielded him from criticism; and Ethiopia, a
> major U.S.ally against Islamic militants.
>
> Other oil producers that have managed to avoid international
> condemnation include Angola, which hasn't held a presidential election
> since 1992, and Gabon, where President Omar Bongo seized power in a
> 1967 coup and now reigns as Africa's longest-serving leader.
>
> "Countries that have made a point of overtly aligning themselves with
> U.S. narratives and policies regarding terrorism appear to have
> benefited not only from financial and military support but seem
> successfully to have diverted attention away from their internal poor
> governance and human rights abuse," said Akwe Amosu, senior analyst at
> the Open Society Institute in Washington.
>
> Much of the West's focus on Zimbabweis tied up in the sadness of
> seeing one of Africa's great success stories fall apart so completely.
>
>
> When Mugabe led Zimbabweto independence in 1980, the country already
> had developed industries and an agricultural base that made it nearly
> self-sufficient because of years of U.N. sanctions imposed against a
> white supremacist regime.
>
> Mugabe abandoned his guerrilla movement's policies of "scientific
> socialism" that called for nationalizing industries and land and
> instead encouraged a fairly free economy that grew and allowed him to
> make major investments in education and health care.
>
> Zimbabweblossomed and became a showcase for the continent, held up as
> an example to then white-ruled South Africaof an economic and
> multiracial success created by a black man. But the world's high hopes
> were short-lived.
>
> In 2000, Mugabe sent out his loyalists to begin violently seizing
> white farmers' land out of revenge for their refusal to support a
> referendum to consolidate his power. That led to the collapse of a
> thriving commercial farming sector that exported food to Zimbabwe's
> neighbors.
>
> The economic meltdown has left a third of Zimbabweans hungry and
> caused inflation to run at a mind-boggling 4 million percent. Out of a
> population of 12 million, some 5 million Zimbabweans are thought to
> have fled to other countries.
>
> Yet while Mugabe has presided over this catastrophe, he still casts a
> spell over many Africans. Thousands of supporters thronged the airport
> at Zimbabwe's capital Friday to greet Mugabe when he returned from
> attending the African Union summit early in the week.
>
> Zimbabweis "the single greatest challenge ... in southern Africa, not
> only because of its terrible humanitarian consequences but also
> because of the dangerous political precedent it sets," said U.N.
> deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro, Tanzania's former foreign
> minister.
>
> ___
> Associated Press writer Abdoulie John in Banjul, Gambia, contributed
> to this report.
>
> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
> Aggo Akyea
> http://akyea.tribalpages.com/
> Check my photos at:
> www.flickr.com/photos/peki
>
> "Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my
> baskets,
> I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them."
> WALDEN by Henry David Thoreau – 1854
>
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