Obama is missing it

Stephen Mpofu
The decision by American President Mr Barrack Obama to lump Zimbabwe together with Egypt, Sudan and two other countries for exclusion from the US-Africa Summit in Washington, DC in August to which he has invited all other African leaders smacks of nothing more than  Washington’s continuing pursuit of President Mugabe and this country in its never-die regime change agenda as punishment on our president and his ZANU-PF Government for the popular land reform programme.

Madagascar and Guinea Bissau are the other African countries which Obama thumbed his African-American nose at for being “not in good standing with the USA.”

Haunted by the reality of his Administration’s illegal sanctions law against Zimbabwe, Obama clearly had to make a painful decision between two equally painful options vis-a-vis the summit to take place in Washington, DC.

First, he could invite President Mugabe to be among the other leaders and then proceed to attend and address the delegates blindfolded to avoid eye contact with the man who stubbornly refuses to buckle under imperialist hegemonic pressure.

Secondly, the American president could soft pedal by opting for isolating our own president and in that way be at home with his own ego as Zimbabwe’s unrepentant nemesis, and in the process having more blissful nights with his wife.

However, the American president chose to ride on the back of the first option, realising as surely he must have, that anything to the contrary would render him, in the eyes of his own people and those of America’s European super cubs, as a spineless leader of a super-power that the US continues to tout itself as, causing havoc in the process by its blatant and unwarranted interference in the internal affairs of other countries because it regards itself as the world’s policeman.

At present Egypt does not have a clear national leader following the ouster by the military of Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood just a year after his ascent to power.

The continuing political chaos in Egypt where thousands of people have been killed in violent protests against the sitting regime should be seen by all as a sequel to the destabilisation by America of that Arab nation and other countries in the Arab world in the Middle East during the so-called Arab Spring.

As for Sudan, President Omar Al-Bashir remains a persona non grata in the US as he has been indicted by the International Criminal Court at the Hague allegedly for crimes against humanity and a warrant for his arrest has been posted around the world. Al-Bashir’s presence in America would certainly result in his arrest there with the possibility of that action upsetting the apple cart as leaders opposed to the Sudanese leader’s trial in Holland might walk out of the summit or decide not to attend it altogether for those already not in the USA.

Back home in Sudan Al-Bashir’s opponents accuse the Field Marshal of wanting to perpetuate himself in power by seeking re-election as president. Like in Egypt, the political systems in Madagascar and Guinea Bissau are decidedly in a state of flux, and, as such, far, far from maturation.

Coming to President Mugabe, it is known that SADC and African Union leaders opposed to the economic embargo imposed on this country have called for its removal in order for Zimbabwe to proceed with her empowerment of the people through land allocation — the very objective for which a protracted armed struggle was waged and in which gallant young men and women lost their lives fighting to reclaim the motherland.

Now then, will those leaders who have openly verbally stood by Zimbabwe in our anti-sanctions campaign eat their own words and rush in their half breath to dine with Obama in the absence of our own President, telling themselves that the American master’s decision not to invite our own leader “is sacrosanct?”

Or will they stand by this condition as posted in their rhetoric, and stand up to be counted with President Mugabe and the rest of the people of this country who are exercising their democratic and inalienable right to empower themselves in an exercise of self-determination and self-realisation? By excluding President Mugabe from the summit — no doubt also at the behest of Britain which took the lead against land reform as the former colonial power in this country — Obama is trying to give off an impression to all other African leaders that our President will be bad company at the dinner table as the invitees sup with the American leader.