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Obi Egbuna Jr Simunye
We remember in 2007 in his letter to President Bush, President Obama urging his predecessor not to lift the sanctions until the “dark cloud of Mugabe’s rule” was lifted.
As the world watches the Obama administration struggle to continue to disguise itself as the world’s biggest paramedic responding to crisis after crisis, especially the ones where US imperialism is losing tremendous ground politically, the most courageous daughters and sons of Africa continue to press for the immediate lifting of US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe and the US blockade on Cuba.
Once President Obama announced he would take steps to normalise relations with Cuba, it hardly required any extraordinary political genius to anticipate that every Obama spin doctor and apologist in the so-called African American community would declare this step the defining moment in US foreign policy during his tenure in the White House. Because Africans inside US borders are prone to be sentimental and emotional when it comes to President Obama, those who do not hang on his every word use President Obama’s speeches to show the difficulty he has distinguishing between change and maintenance.
In 2008 when addressing the Cuban American National Foundation which marked their 25th anniversary in a speech entitled Renewing US Leadership In America, these are some of President Obama’s passionate remarks:
“Throughout my entire life, there has been injustice in Cuba. Never in the lives of two generations of Cuba, have the people of Cuba known democracy. This is the terrible and tragic status quo that we have known for half a century of elections that are anything but free and fair; of dissidents locked away in dark prison cells for speaking the truth. I won’t stand for this injustice, you won’t stand for this injustice, and together we will stand for freedom in Cuba.”
During the 2008 presidential debates President Obama told CNN he would loosen restrictions on remittances from Cubans living in the US returning to visit their relatives, which the president considered a show of good faith in the direction of normalisation.
The next thing President Obama shared was he would be willing to facilitate a series of dialogues between low level diplomats and he could see Senator John McCain characterising this as a desire to have tea with Commandante Raul Castro.
This shows that President Obama’s sudden revelation to normalise relations with Cuba was in the works before he was elected. For Africans home and abroad the historical record always guides us when we seek clarity and insight, when the US Government in conjunction with Britain organized the coup that overthrew Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah on February 24, 1966, when the US talked about normalizing relations with Ghana.
At that exact moment, the US Ambassador to Ghana, Franklin Williams, was President Nkrumah’s classmate at Lincoln University.
Before that tragic occurrence the CIA assassinated Patrice Lumumba in the Congo five years before, this ruthless act of terrorism carried out when both countries had normalised relations.
If the US establishes normalized relations, but the blockade against Cuba remains intact, it means that Cuban-US relations are an exact carbon copy of Zimbabwean-US relations.
When President Obama’s predecessor George W Bush introduced the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act in 2001 the two countries had normalized relations.
What the annals of history have taught African people is that capitalist and imperialist diplomacy are rooted in hypocrisy and hostility. During an address at a SAPES trust meeting in February of 2014 the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe David Bruce Wharton, when discussing the July 31 elections in Zimbabwe the year before, stated: “The elections happened peacefully, and the people of Zimbabwe deserve to see that as progress. While we recognise and congratulate Zimbabwe on the peacefulness of the process, we do not believe the process was transparent or credible. We are willing to work with Zanu-PF members that are willing to work with US.”
This statement is not only callous but has serious political and security ramifications.
Was Ambassador Wharton implying that some Zanu-PF members were lining up to make backdoor deals with the US Government?
This should demonstrate to all Zimbabweans why at the same moment President Mugabe chairs both SADC and the African Union, why certain media outlets prefer to discuss the factionalism within Zanu-PF. So when engaging US diplomats, Zanu-PF leadership must inform President Mugabe and keep a recording device readily available. We understand why our comrade, Josefina Vidal, the Director of US Affairs at the Cuban Foreign Ministry would say: “The way those (US) diplomats should act change in terms of stimulating organising training supplying financing elements within our country that act against the interests of . . . the government of the Cuban people”.
The Obama administration highlights 12 areas concerning travelling to Cuba, namely family visits, official business of the US Government, journalistic activity, professional research and meetings, educational activities, religious activities, public performances, clinics, workshops, athletics, and other competitions; support for the Cuban people, humanitarian projects, activities of private foundations or research of educational institutes, exportation importation or transmission or information materials and certain authorised export transactions.
Before President Obama decided to do his best impersonation of Richard Nixon when he introduced what was called ping pong diplomacy, when he pursued normalised relations with China, Cuba was getting roughly 3 million tourists a year.
In the case of Zimbabwe President Obama approached travel entirely different. Before the inclusive Government in 2009, the US State Department had a post that said US citizens’ non-essential travel to Zimbabwe should be deferred due to political violence.
This scare tactic was not only an insult to our intelligence, but a blatant attempt to pull wool over the eyes of all US citizens especially the 40 million so-called African Americans. For all US citizens who had never been to Zimbabwe prior 2009 this led you to believe the peace and harmony between Zimbabweans was a bi-product of the heroic exploits of Zimbabwe’s former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his faction of MDC.
By the time 2013 came around Zimbabwe was on the world stage for co-hosting the UN Tourism Summit, the irony was Zimbabwe did not have to organise a campaign round up of alleged gang members, for the purpose of incarcerating them. This is what the US Government chose to do during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, California.
The USAID (United States Agency for International Development) has been a thorn in Zimbabwe and Cuba’s side in the era of overt intelligence they are a lethal combo of missionaries and espionage agents.
An article by US News and World Report revealed that last year in Cuba, the USAID were paying employees $5.41 an hour to stir dissent in Cuba in an event billed as an HIV-AIDS workshop.
US claims to have raised over US$1 billion for humanitarian projects in Zimbabwe. Since the US-EU sanctions have caused Zimbabwe over US$40 billion since 2001 and Cuba over US$100 billion since 1962, why does US-EU imperialism feel the need to publicise its drops in the ocean?
We remember in 2007 in his letter to President Bush President Obama urged his predecessor not to lift the sanctions until the “dark cloud of Mugabe’s rule” was lifted.
If President Obama was a meteorologist this clearly would have been the wrong forecast.
This administration should lift the US blockade on Cuba and US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe and get it over with.
Obi Egbuna Jr is the US Correspondent to The Herald and a US based member of the Zimbabwe-Cuba Friendship Association. His email is [email protected]
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