The Sunday Mail
As harmonised elections increasingly become imminent, Zimbabwe, too, has to be both vigilant and wary, for elections usually provide an opportunity for the West to get their puppets in power, failure of which they try to incite post-electoral conflict.
GOD’S athlete, Pope Francis, was in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) last week to soothe and comfort troubled souls currently roiled by strife.
An assortment of greedy and blood-thirsty rebel groups, among them the notorious M23, have flung open the gates of hell in the eastern part of this populous country, indiscriminately killing hordes of people and displacing millions.
It is tragic!
And the Pope is a big stockholder in the DRC, where half of its more than 90 million souls — about 45 million — consider themselves Catholics and look up to him for guidance.
Last week, he was visibly moved by the begriming poverty and seemingly morbid and intractable cycle of conflict, death, poverty and underdevelopment that afflict this marked African country.
Naturally, he lashed out at those responsible for this gargantuan human tragedy, which is just, but a microcosm of a continent-wide phenomenon.
“Hands off the Democratic Republic of Congo! Hands off Africa! Stop choking Africa: It is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered,” said Pope Francis.
“We cannot grow accustomed to the bloodshed that has marked this country for decades, causing millions of deaths that remain mostly unknown elsewhere. What is happening here needs to be known.”
Explicit and implicit in this papal rebuke is the fact that Africa continues to suffer because of her resources.
The magnitude of such a curse can only be keenly felt by countries such as the DRC, which is endowed with mineral wealth thought to be valued at more than US$24 trillion.
In fact, it is fabulously rich in everything — diamonds, gold, high-grade copper, nickel, tin, etcetera.
There are growing fears that it can only get worse for a country that boasts two-thirds of the world’s cobalt, a coveted mineral that is crucial to the West, as it is used in the manufacture of batteries that are key in the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
Last year, Bishop Lazi told you how Belgian mining company Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga (UMHK), which was formed by King Leopold II in 1906 to exploit minerals in the colony, was culpable and complicit in the assassination of the DRC’s first
Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba on January 17, 1961 in order to further its selfish interests.
It even supplied the sulphuric acid that was used to dissolve Lumumba’s mortal remains.
Presciently aware of the fate that was to befall him soon after falling into the hands of his enemies, Lumumba penned his last letter to his wife, Pauline, declaring: “Throughout my struggle for the independence of my country, I have never doubted for a single instant that the sacred cause to which my comrades and I have dedicated our entire lives would triumph in the end. But what we wanted for our country — its right to an honourable life, to perfect dignity, to independence with no restrictions — was never wanted by Belgian colonialism and its Western allies, who found direct and indirect, intentional and unintentional support among certain high officials of the United Nations, that body in which we placed all our trust when we called on it for help.
“They have corrupted some of our countrymen; they have bought others; they have done their part to distort the truth and defile our independence . . .
“I want my children, whom I leave behind and perhaps will never see again, to be told that the future of the Congo is beautiful and that their country expects them, as it expects every Congolese, to fulfil the sacred task of rebuilding our independence, our sovereignty.”
Since then, the DRC has seen several leaders — Joseph Kasavubu, Mobutu Sese Seko, Laurent Kabila, Joseph Kabila and now Felix Tshisekedi — but it is not anywhere near finding the promised “beautiful” future.
Close to 70 percent of its people continue to live on less than US$1,90 per day.
Conversely, the tiny European state of Belgium, which benefitted from frenzied looting and exploitation of both the Congo and the Congolese for 76 years (1885-1961), now enjoys enviable high standards of living and excellent public facilities.
Their streets are paved with gold from the depths of our Mother Continent.
We, too, were, and still are, victims of the same plunder by Rhodesians, who salted away our valuable minerals for close to a century.
The chief architects of our poverty, who unashamedly flaunt their pilfered wealth, now have the temerity to insult us by claiming that we find ourselves in desperate circumstances because, as black Africans, we are innately and inherently incapable of managing our own affairs, feeding ourselves or behaving in a civil manner befitting of human beings.
Senseless
It is the same argument that is often aped by their local askaris, who alacritously volunteer to do the white man’s bidding.
Bishop Lazi believes no matter how much Africa might change its leaders without challenging the obtaining skewed world order, its fortunes — or misfortunes — will remain the same, because the world, as currently configured, is rigged to ensure the continent continues to be a primary producer of minerals, whose proceeds are barely enough for sustenance.
We cannot continue to export cotton lint and import fake clothing labels and second-hand clothes.
We cannot continue to leave our fields fallow and use the scant resources to import soyabean from Argentina, chickens from Brazil, grain from Mexico and wheat from Ukraine.
We cannot export our cobalt and lithium and be content with importing smartphones and laptops from America and China.
It is just preposterous!
By exporting our raw materials, we are creating employment elsewhere and leaving our burgeoning youth populations stranded.
This simply means we have to grow our own food, create industries that can easily be supported with feedstock from our readily available raw materials and export high-value finished goods.
The 16-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) supplies the world with 18 percent of its cobalt, 21 percent of zinc, 26 percent of gold, 55 percent of diamonds and 72 percent of platinum group metals, but contributes a little less than 3 percent of global trade.
It is, therefore, little wonder that exports from a country such as Mexico are usually quadruple those from all countries that belong to this regional bloc, Zimbabwe included.
But our fierce Pan-African prophets such as Amilcar Cabral, Thomas Sankara and Lumumba, among others, have been telling us this, and were assassinated precisely because of that.
Puppets or bloodshed
The West will never wish Africa well.
To them, the continent must necessarily remain as a perpetual source of raw materials for its industries.
The Bishop told you how America and its allies laid siege on Venezuela, which holds the world’s largest oil reserves, by sponsoring their puppet Juan Guiado.
He also told you how the same countries engineered the ouster of Bolivia’s first president of indigenous descent, Eva Morales, in 2019 to create a pliant regime that would give it access to the country’s lithium resources, which are incidentally the largest in the world.
The playbook is always the same — either sponsor a puppet that is easy to control or destabilise a country by creating conflict while resources are being looted.
Following the NATO-sponsored civil war in Libya, which culminated in the assassination of Muammar Gaddafi, oil companies from the West continue to feast on its oil.
With the Russia-Ukraine war still raging, and even escalating, more oil is now being siphoned from Tripoli.
Matthew 12 verse 25 is instructive: “Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.’”
West African countries such as Mali and Burkina Faso, which largely accuse France of stirring up fratricidal conflict in their territories, have had enough and recently booted out French troops.
The two countries are rich in gold.
Bishop Lazarus is not dreaming this stuff up.
In November last year, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni launched a scathing and stinging attack on fellow European country France for exploiting the continent’s people and its natural resources.
Interestingly, she claimed France “demand that 50 percent of everything that Burkina Faso exports ends up in the coffers of the French treasury”.
“So, the solution is not to take Africans and bring them to Europe. The solution is to free Africans from certain Europeans who exploit them and allow these people to live off what they have,” she claimed.
Epic!
Mind you, this outburst was more because she was agitated by the continued influx of desperate Africans to Italy and less because of her concern for the well-being of ordinary wananchi.
As harmonised elections increasingly become imminent, Zimbabwe, too, has to be both vigilant and wary, for elections usually provide an opportunity for the West to get their puppets in power, failure of which they try to incite post-electoral conflict.
The West knows full well that it is practically mission impossible for its quislings here to outvote ZANU PF.
Of late, you might have been seeing a proliferation of content on social media platforms, especially supposedly comic skits, that are targeting the President, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) and our security forces.
These are just manifestations of an insidious campaign to create disaffection and undermine the integrity of our elections, which is needed as grounds for disputed elections.
Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, who has survived countless ploys by the West to overthrow him as part of its geopolitical designs in Eastern Europe, left us with a very insightful message last week.
President Lukashenko
“Zimbabwe looks like a miracle story; it has all the mineral resources crucial for survival — that is why they will not let you live peacefully.
“The reason behind the sanctions imposed on your country by America is not because you are not democratic, but because your Government made a decision not to let foreign companies cheat your country, rob your country, put your country on its knees,” he said on Tuesday.
“You will see Western nations trying to sow dissension among you, trying to bend you over, to put you on your knees.
“You should and must survive; you will survive if you stand united, if you will not let discord separate your nation over some illusory democratic values.
“What you need to do is preserve peace in your country, avoid confrontation — that’s how you will survive, otherwise you will once again get under colonial rule; don’t let it happen,” said President Lukashenko.
We will not let that happen.
Bishop out!
