Mnangagwa speaks on fake nationalism

ZIMBABWEANS should remain vigilant against a new wave of fake nationalism designed to discourage African countries from dealing with investors that are not from the West, which is using all means possible to re-establish its hegemony, President Mnangagwa has said.

Writing in his weekly column ahead of Africa Day celebrations on Wednesday, the President said some Western governments were sponsoring pseudo environmental and mining advocacy groups that seek to agitate communities against non-Western mining interests, particularly the Chinese and Russians.

He expressed disappointment in opposition political parties that were being paid by the West to mobilise their supporters to demonstrate against Chinese investments, including at Bikita Minerals.

"Ironically, Bikita Minerals was only taken over by a Chinese investor earlier in the year after being owned and exploited by Western interests for many years since the resource was discovered back in colonial days," he said.

"The mine has been teetering on the brink, until this new Chinese investor came to the rescue, injecting fresh capital with which to expand operations, thereby securing jobs for Zimbabweans."

When the mine was in hands of Western investors, President Mnangagwa said, those who are protesting were never interested in its affairs.

"While those mining properties were in Western hands, both long before our Independence and after, not once did host communities benefit. Nor were host communities incited, mobilised and sponsored to defend their delectable resource and environment.

"The NGOs which now proliferate were nowhere in sight. Not even the false doctrine of resource or environmental justice for Africans and Africa was there.

"Our struggles would have taken much shorter if such a level of agitation was there as we fought for Independence."

President Mnangagwa said the coercive economic diplomacy by the West is not unique to Zimbabwe alone but extends to other countries in the Southern African region.

"Sub-regionally, this Western-sponsored, anti-African form of fake nationalism has assumed both absurd and deadly dimensions," he said.

"In the sister Republic of Namibia, it extends to shutting down little Chinese retail outlets in the name of protecting Namibian consumers against "fake" Chinese products.

"The underlying assumption is that the Namibian consumer is too simple and infantile to distinguish between fake and usable items for his or her gainful purchase."

In South Africa, the President added, a whole violent and often lethal movement against African immigrants has now taken root with African-on-African violent now common.

"Yet no white immigrants are affected, even though South Africa's Economy largely remains in white and foreign hands, as is also the case in many African countries.

"This is a racialised war of black African underdogs, couched as nationalism, a fight for servitude by equally disempowered Africans, whatever their countries of origin. This attacks the very heart and soul of our solidarity as Africans uniformly objectified by long colonialism."

He urged citizens to remember that the arms that liberated the country came from progressive countries of the world, primarily Russia and China.

"To the liberated African country, we were never made to pay for those arms, both before and after our freedoms," he said.

"It remains a great gesture of compassion and solidarity unmatched by any other in human history. By contrast, Western interests which had depleted our finite natural resources for nothing in return, and for over a century of occupation, have never paid reparations to us. Not even a dime for all those years of resource pillage."

President Mnangagwa called out the US for trying to come up with laws that punish African countries for trading with Russia in the wake of its military operation in Ukraine.

"It is very disturbing when legal coercion and even threats are used against smaller states to force partnerships of the unwilling or to stop gainful partnerships between willing sovereign states. This is against basic tenets of international relations under the United Nations Charter. Our rights as sovereign nations, principally the right of self-determination, are being threatened."