In breaking emotional-political news, the US is hurt and disappointed with Zimbabwe. As if any of our leading decision-makers know where that is. The news story from Reuters via Yahoo! tells us of the US State Departments’ “growing” displeasure with the African nation.
As the foreign policy arm of the world’s most powerful nation inflates with negative emotion over the government of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, teams of psychologists must be on hand in case America explodes over a regime change that isn’t happening.
The Reuters story cites an unnamed State Department source moaning “The disappointment just keeps getting worse and worse,” while at the same time portraying Mnangagwa as the boogeyman. Granted the man nicknamed the Crocodile is not a pushover, but he is also not leading the factions in Zimbabwe backed by the CIA. The bitter point being, Washington wants Emmerson Mnangagwa. So, we should be asking the question “WHY?”
Well, for one thing, the change in leadership has upset many applecarts in the west. Take for instance all those Belgians and Israelis displaced in the illegal diamond trade when the government changed hands. See WikiLeaks on this one. Who can forget that back when President Robert Mugabe ran Zimbabwe he was said to have ushered in “misrule and dazzling corruption.” When Mnangagwa ended up seizing power, everybody in Washington and London got amnesia and forgot Zimbabwe has always been a power struggle. Now Trump’s State Department is all weepy over the same old game in southern Africa.
A picture window into Zimbabwe’s banana republic heart can be had by looking at one of the diamond moguls who’s been lurking about selling illegally to rich foreigners. A man named Tendai Makurumidze was convicted back in 2008, is listed in WikiLeaks cables as a key seller to the Belgians and Israelis. Now, he’s back in the news being arrested and released on a whopping $500 bail for being caught with illegal diamonds in his pocket. There’s no news as to the value of the rough diamonds he’d procured, but I’m willing to bet they brought more than 500 bucks.
If you look into the illicit dealings in Zimbabwe you’ll find a hornet’s nest of dirty dealers from almost every industrialized nation. There are firms like Augur Investments that cannot decide if they are Estonian, Ukrainian, or Zimbabwean. There’s Ernie Blom, who is the World Federation of Diamond Bourses Honorary Life President. In the US Embassy cable published by WikiLeaks, Blom allegedly boasts about involvement in illegal Zimbabwean diamonds. The short story here is, Zimbabwe stinks to high heavens since forever for internal and external illicit dirty dealing. And Washington is disappointed?
Open graves in the mines. Decades of human rights atrocities. Neocolonialism practiced on a mammoth scale. Crime on an epic scale. And suddenly the disappointment registers. My question is, “If America can change Middle Eastern or Ukraine governments like a game of musical chairs…?” Better still, why is the Paris Club of investors (United States, Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany, and Japan) thinking about almost $2 billion in new loans to Zimbabwe if the world order is so miffed? Funny, huh? The same group can levy sanctions on Russia or Venezuela for defending their existence, but they’ll fork over more billions to a place Trump would designate a “shit hole” no matter what. Funny, Trump has sanctioned 100 entities and individuals in Zimbabwe, including Mnangagwa, but that’s no impediment to letting the crooks pile up debt for the people.
I think it’s high time the American people register our “growing displeasure” with Washington bullshit, smoke, and mirrors. Man up Trump. If we are running on blood diamonds and black market oil, let’s just own it. But please, tell the whining State Department bozos to just shut up.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
