Open letter to US President Joe Biden on Zimbabwe

Greetings

I recently evidenced US mission to charm and lure Africa after China showed ever-surging leverage in the continent that you’d to effectively and quickly counter and foil.

Due to that, you’d take steps, mainly hoodwinking it by promising ‘boons and bonuses’ to keep Africa your conventional colony and natural material purveyor.

You told African rulers attending the US-African Leaders Summit in Washington DC recently that “Africa belongs at the table in every room, in every room where global challenges are being discussed and every institution where discussions are taking place” (cnn.com, Dec 15, 2022). Really? Seriously? Wow!

Mr President, mark and watch my words. For conscious and traumatised Africans, your fake hutzpah and honied libretti retraumatises.

You used colonial referend to nicely but fortuitously describe how you view Africa and to deliver your intention (mens rea) of recolonising Africa.

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Whose table is Africa at? Is Africa a loaf of bread or a roasted chicken before colonial eyes, minds and psyche? Is it because Africa’s born, cloned, and disfigured at the table your ancestors congregated at the criminal and villainous Berlin conference (1884) that brutally and monstrously defiled on and disfigured Africa to what it currently it is, divided and partitioned and pathetic as a criminal gambit of weakening it in order to perpetually colonise and exploit it?

For whoever cares about Africa, well intends, aims to decolonise and help Africa out of its colonial enacted futility, the language of the table traumatises Africa and Africans.

Mr President, when you talk about every institution, what do you mean? Do you mean criminal and fake explorers, merchants, and missionaries who presided over the colonisation of Africa or the international superstructure and its tools such as the IMF, the UN, and the WB, inter alia, that abetted the colonisation and the mugging of Africa?

To nicely hoodwink ever-begging and ever-dependent rulers despite sitting on humongous sources of resources of value, you promised to cough US$ billion. What a sweet deal if, indeed, you mean serious business.  Again, did you do this out of altruism or valuing Africa? Nay.

The US woke up from its slumber after China made aggressive inroads in Africa.

Mr President, did you think about your bait before offering it? Yeah. Do you think the US$55 billion is likely to entice and thereby quash the US$300 billion China promised last year by Diana Chen, China Africa Business Council head (VOA, February 2, 2022)? Who is fooling whom here?

What new will you do for Africa if at all China’s already done everything from aid, building infrastructure, and corrupt deals if we face it? Do you know that China adapted and adopted your decoy to imbed itself in Africa?

Mr President, I humbly present a case for Zimbabwe, a resilient country you wanted to go to the dogs to no avail after its people rose up against Mugabe to no avail.

Though Zimbabwe, just like any country, has its internal issues, is it fair to hang it the way your country and the West in general have so brutally attempted by shunning it? I understand. Your clangour’s that Zimbabwe needs to embrace Western rule of law and the respect of human rights.

Well, is Zimbabwe alone in this quagmire? Bad governance’s the creature of corruption, dictatorship and the absence of democracy among others like Western democracy is. Is Zimbabwe the only brutal and corrupt dictatorship the only corrupt in our colonial and corrupt world? What of your best stooges such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia among others? Mr President, your country and the West wanted Zimbabwe to become a failed country. However, do you think if Zimbabwe becomes a failed government won’t the region and Africa in general be adversely affected? Ask South Africa that’s for a long time bore the burden of Zimbabwe’s colonial and man-made economic woes. Refer to how innocent Zimbabweans, for decades, have born the brunt.

What humans’ human rights do you advocate? Why can’t you see that the botch or disintegration of Zimbabwe’s the failure of Africa you’re now spuriously enticing? You know it too well. You recently “exonerated” Venezuela’s sins after the West faced energy catch-22 when Russia went to war with Ukraine. Because of that, the West lost a big chunk of oil supply. Thus, you’d — out of double standards and necessity — to forgive Venezuela so that you can get oil supply.

Mr President, do you think Africa will advance economically without key players such as Zimbabwe whose contribution to world economy is bigger than your beloved Egypt? Let’s honestly and realistically reason together.

Do you know that, if Zimbabwe’s scar and sin were its former President, Robert Mugabe, why’s it still shunned many years after his death? Your sanctions didn’t, and have never affected Mugabe, his family, you “targeted” though the truth’s different that you requited because white folks were chastened.

Instead, your unfair sanctions have heinously affected innocuous babies, children, elderly people, pregnant women, and poor Zimbabweans. Was Mugabe real a real sin or racism is since Mugabe arrogated white farmers’ land that they also grabbed from blacks? Comparably, did Mugabe commit a bigger sacrilege than dictatorships in Egypt and Saudi Arabia still commit vis-à-vis gross violations of human rights? Is it because Zimbabwe is African and black?

Mr President, please forgive me for bringing a racial nuance. I’m in Canada on your northerly border. I know too well how black people are systematically discriminated against in the West and the Americas including even those whom you torture like Venezuela that likewise replicate the same on blacks. I know too well what it’s to be black in a “white” world. I, hence, speak from real-world experience.

In sum, Mr President, I rest my case praying that please, do justice for the haemorrhaging to death Zimbabwe and helpless Africa, lift the sanctions against Zimbabwe which China has taken advantage of.

Sincerely yours,

Nkwazi Mhango — (PhD-ADB, Peace and Conflict Studies) at the Arthur V Mauro Institute for Peace & Justice, Manitoba University, Winnipeg, Canada.

• Mhango is a lifetime member of the Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador (WANL), an expert in terrorism and author of over 20 books among which are Africa Reunite or Perish, 'Is It Global War on Terrorism' or Global War over Terra Africana? How Africa Developed Europe and contributed many chapters in scholarly works on many issues of importance on Africa with the specialisation in the deconstruction and decolonisation theories he has been working on for a while now.