Black Star News: Don’t Support Mugabe!

Yet, you allow this obvious propaganda "The Struggle For Zimbabwe" blackstarnews.com June 26, 2008 by Abayomi Azikiwe on behalf of The Butcher Of Harare, Robert Mugabe, to be published? Is the blood of Zimbabwean African brothers and sisters cheaper than those of Ugandan victims of Yoweri Museveni? Is their suffering any less painful that that of the people of Uganda?

[Zimbabwe: A Rejoinder]

I used to respect The Black Star News. But this newspaper is not “Speaking Truth To Power” with respect to Zimbabwe’s crisis.

Your critiques of Uganda’s genocidal fascist, backed by London and Washington, have been spot on through the years.

Yet, you allow this obvious propaganda “The Struggle For Zimbabwe” blackstarnews.com June 26, 2008 by Abayomi Azikiwe on behalf of The Butcher Of Harare, Robert Mugabe, to be published? Is the blood of Zimbabwean African brothers and sisters cheaper than those of Ugandan victims of Yoweri Museveni? Is their suffering any less painful that that of the people of Uganda?

We must not be so fixated on the fact that the West is lined up against Mugabe, to recognize that he has made serious mistakes. Why do you think people like Simba Makoni, the former finance minister, who was also once a guerrilla fighter abandoned Mugabe?

Not everyone opposing Mugabe is a puppet of the U.K. as he wants the world to believe.

Of course it would be better if the MDC was not tightly allied with the West. But that is no fault of Morgan Tsvangirai. While the West may oppose Mugabe to punish him for daring to redistribute land from whites, their kith and kin, to Africans, Zimbabweans now oppose him because the country is starving and the economy has collapsed.

I agree with the author that the BBC and CNN and other Western media outlets serve as arms of the MDC. But the author fails to note that it is the Mugabe government’s stranglehold over the state media companies that drove Morgan Tsvangirai into the hands of these media outlets.

No one is claiming Tsvangirai is the answer to all of Zimbabwe’s problems — in fact he may not be the answer. But Zimbabweans want change and that is why even by the Mugabe government’s own admission, Tsvangirai won the first round of the votes.

He may have made a strategic blunder, once again listening to his London and Washington advisers by fleeing to the Netherlands embassy, in an attempt to internationalize the conflict and drag in the United Nations. His bigger blunder was not to stand for the run-off, which he would have won anyway despite the harassment.

As I state, Tsvangirai may not be the answer but Zimbabweans want change and if they believe the MDC can bring that change, or the beginning of that change, so be it.

For The Black Star News to allow that kind of propaganda written by Abayomi Azikiwe to be published just tarnishes the credibility of your respected newspaper. I am familiar with the history of one great Azikiwe from the 1960s. He was a great Nigerian Pan-African and nationalist. Abayomi is no Azikiwe.

I also dare The Black Star News to publish my rejoinder. I dare you to “Speak Truth To Power” as you proclaim!

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