Posted on 03/08/2003 1:33:34 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
HARARE (Reuters) - A senior Zimbabwean official condemned on Saturday a U.S. decision to impose sanctions on the leadership as part of a "white racist" attack on a government he said was fighting for the interests of its black majority.
President Bush on Friday imposed economic sanctions on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and 76 other high-ranking government officials, accusing them of undermining democracy in the impoverished southern African country.
Bush, following the lead of the European Union, issued an executive order freezing their assets and barring Americans from engaging in any transactions or dealings with them.
The Zimbabwean official said the new sanctions were part of a well-coordinated attack on Mugabe by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who he said was angry over Mugabe's seizures of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe, a former British colony.
"All these sanctions being imposed on us are unjustified because they are part of a racist campaign against our land reform program," said the official, who declined to be named.
"This is not about democracy, human rights or about any concern for the welfare of blacks. This is about our land and heritage," he told Reuters.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) welcomed the U.S. sanctions, saying they represented a principled stand against tyranny.
Mugabe has been under fire from the West over the alleged rigging of an election last year and the persecution of political foes, as well as the seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks.
The United States, the Commonwealth and the European Union, encouraged by rights groups, have all imposed some travel, aid and economic sanctions on Zimbabwe.
Blair has been particularly critical of Mugabe, leading opposition to the Zimbabwean government in the European Union.
OPPOSITION PRAISE SANCTIONS
In a statement on Friday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the situation in Zimbabwe "endangers the southern African region" and threatens to undermine democratic reforms throughout the continent.
The White House stressed that the sanctions were not aimed at the people of Zimbabwe, and that it was "working diligently" with its international partners to ensure that adequate food supplies are made available to Zimbabweans in need.
MDC spokesman Paul Themba-Nyathi said "We welcome these new sanctions heartily because they are going to send a clear and unequivocal message to Mugabe and his cronies that decent governments are not going to tolerate his tyranny."
"It is a message that a government that tortures its own people as a matter of course must suffer serious sanctions, and be isolated," he told Reuters.
In February, the EU renewed targeted sanctions against Mugabe and his close associates for one year. The measures include a visa ban, an arms embargo and a freeze on the assets of senior government officials.
Last month Mugabe launched a blistering attack on Bush and Blair, branding them imperialists who wanted to impose a new form of colonialism on developing countries.
Those detained were later released without charge, Williams said. No immediate comment was available from the police. Marches were held in Bulawayo and the capital, Harare, to protest alleged violations of women's rights under the increasingly repressive government of President Robert Mugabe.
One poster read: "Our daughters are not sex slaves." The women are demanding that Mugabe's ruling party youth militias are disbanded immediately, the South African Press Association reported. Women activists say that many young women are forced into joining the militias and then are raped at training camps.
Demonstrators also held signs that read: "We want food our children." Almost half of Zimbabwe's 13 million people face possible starvation as a food crisis grips the country caused by both erratic rainfall and the government's chaotic and often violent seizure of white-owned commercial farms.
Some of the background for those who haven't been following Mugabe's reign of terror
***Mugabe has been under fire from the West over the alleged rigging of an election last year and the persecution of political foes, as well as the seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks.***
Zimbabwe -- Beware the U-turn***……….The key to understanding what Mugabe and his Zanu PF party are up to - for blacks as well as whites - is the word "leases." The ruling party moguls, security force chiefs and 54,000 others getting so-called "model 2" holdings, capable of being farmed on an individual basis, will not be granted the freehold their 5,000 white predecessors had (The first 2,900 seizure and eviction orders fell due on August 9 and scores of whites were detained over the past weekend for defying them, although their constitutional validity is heavily in doubt). At the first sign of political disloyalty the "new farmers", as Mugabe calls them, will be liable to instant eviction.***
That is so 90's.
An amusing crack, but actually the hard core Left began playing the race card in a major way by the late 1920s, when they found out that the idea of a Proletarian revolution was simply not going to fly in most of the advanced countries. "Race" became their more effective metaphor for the egalitarian class-warfare that went back to the French Revolution.
What is sad about this gesture against the monster Marxist, Mugabe, is that Bush apparently justified it in part on the basis that he is endangering "Democracy." In point of fact, Mugabe is a product of "Democracy." He is an excellent example of how "Democracy" actually works in multi ethnic Third World States. It almost always ends very ugly, very fast. (See Democracy In The Third World.)
The United States and Britain finally strangled what was once the Rhodesian bastion of civilization; and bear moral responsibility for what is now in place. That needs to be noted, before the same misguided policy is applied again.
William Flax
"All these sanctions being imposed on us are unjustified because they are part of a racist campaign against our land reform program," said the official, who declined to be named.
Actually this should read "...they are part of a campaign against our racist land reform program,"...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.