Africa News Digest
'The Decider' Lets Britain Decide for Him in Africa
Feb. 17 (EIRNS)On his arrival in Tanzania on the second stop in his five-nation African tour, George W. Bush reportedly announced immediately that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on her way to Kenya, to make clear that the United States has withdrawn any support for the shaky government of Mwai Kibaki. Bush said Rice would tell Kibaki that the United States would not support his government under current circumstances, but only if, and after, Kibaki reaches a power-sharing deal with opposition leader Raila Odinga and his party.
U.S. Democratic statesman Lyndon LaRouche recommended that Rice "keep her nose out of it; it's a bad enough situation, she will only make it worse by taking sides. The side she's taking," LaRouche added, "is the British side. This is their chaos policy, and has been throughout this crisis."
Kenyan Government Goes After the British
Feb. 16 (EIRNS)Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula lashed out publicly at Adam Wood, Britain's High Commissioner (ambassador) to Kenya Feb. 14, after Wood, in a Kenya Television Network interview, cited "irregularities" in the contested Dec. 27 election that have been the pretext for the London-orchestrated violence sweeping Kenya that has already claimed at least 1,000 lives. Wood said, "In view of these irregularities, we do not find that the government that is presently constituted represents the democratic will of the Kenyan people." Wetangula said in a statement: "While we have acted with restraint, continued provocation will not be tolerated further and the government will not hesitate to take appropriate remedial measures. The High Commissioner is still hell bent to wreck the boat."
While it is acknowledged that both sides in the conflict were involved in irregularities, Wood's statements are spurring the opposition to take a more hard-line stance against the government, at the time that former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is trying to negotiate a settlement to the conflict.
Given the large number of Kenyans who are living in poverty, some warn that if this conflict is not resolved, the result will be perpetual class war, of the poor against both political groups now vying to control the country. "If this issue is not resolved, the worst thing we would hear or see is a class war, where these people ... say they have nothing to lose," Abbas Gullet, secretary general of the Kenya Red Cross, said recently. While the political divisions in Kenya, created by London, are along ethnic lines, the message is that those on both sides have more in common because of their poverty, than they do with the wealthy of their own ethnic group. "If there's no political settlement soon, at some point, the gangs will unite together, attacking, without discrimination, the homes of [President] Kibaki and [opposition leader] Raila's middle-class supporters," wrote managing editor Charles Onyango-Obbo of the Daily Nation of Kenya.
Bush Carries Out British Agenda on Africa Tour
Feb. 16 (EIRNS)On his five-nation tour in Africa, Bush is making it clear that the United States will play the role of enforcer for London's policy of turning Africa into a plantation for the Anglo-Dutch financier oligarchy, while its population will be greatly reduced by destabilizations and wars. Bush, no doubt, has his own agenda, targeting the countries he is visiting for special reasons, such as providing a base in Africa for the Pentagon's Africa Command. During his trip, Bush vowed that his administration "will continue to do more to combat violence in Africa." So arms supplies and American armed forces intervention, through training of African military forces, or actual on-the-ground interventions, in the name of fighting terror, are on the agenda.
Bush also intervened in the internal affairs of Kenya, by backing a call, as have the British, for a power-sharing agreement (as opposed to resolving the crisis by aiding Kenya's economic development) between the President of Kenya and the opposition. The political cleavage in Kenya is along ethnic lines, as previously set up by London. Bush said he is sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Kenya Feb. 18 to convey that message directly.
London Keeps South Africa in Its Destabilization Sights
Feb. 16 (EIRNS)The London-based financier oligarchy has given another indication that it is determined to destabilize South Africa, by using the BBC to organize South Africans against their government, as well as to give BBC's audience a sociologicalas opposed to politically truthfulexplanation for anticipated unrest. During African National Congress (ANC) party leadership elections in December 2007, financiers from the City of London were in favor of Jacob Zuma's campaign to unseat South African President Thabo Mbeki as president of the ANC, which Zuma won. Now London is going after Zuma, who the poor in South Africa had been led to believe represented an alternative to the economic policies of Mbeki.
BBC rattled Zuma in an interview for a BBC1 Panorama documentary entitled "No More Mandelas." After making the unsuspecting Zuma squirm by asking him point-blank: "Are you a crook?" the interviewer went on to ask his audience: "How did the Presidency pass from Mandela to this man?" Within half an hour, on its Sunday night broadcast on Feb. 10, thousands of British TV viewers were given the impression that South Africa's democracy and the ANC's moral integrity were on a downward spiral, while crime, unemployment, and AIDS ravage the country. After interviewing a number of poor people in South Africa, the program host said: "From answers like these, you get a sense of how far the elite of the ANC has drifted away from their constituencythe people of the townships."
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