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Africa Subsaharan
14 African states rally behind Bob
2007-11-29
A group of 14 African nations yesterday raised the stakes ahead of next weekÂ’s EU-Africa summit by threatening to pull out unless European leaders agreed not to single out Zimbabwe for criticism. Officials in Brussels, however, said there was no way that President Mugabe could escape a lecture on the dire straits of his countrymen if he turned up to the meeting in Lisbon.
This says a lot more about the 14 African nations than it does about the EU.
The threat from the Southern African Development Community was last night seen in Brussels as a provocative attempt to influence the agenda being drawn up by the Portuguese hosts, and certain to put Africa at loggerheads with the EU. The SADC threat escalated the presummit row over Mr MugabeÂ’s attendance which has already seen Gordon Brown confirm his own boycott of the summit, a move followed by Mirek Topolanek, the Czech Prime Minister.

Tomaz Salomao, executive secretary of the SADC, said that its 14 members including South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania as well as Zimbabwe, would pull out if Zimbabwe was on the agenda. “SADC will not go to Lisbon to discuss Zimbabwe because the summit is not about Zimbabwe, but about relations between the EU and Africa,” he said.
Those relations appear to be characterized by quite a bit of misplaced arrogance on one side and quite a bit of misplaced humility on the other.
Posted by:Fred

#9  cut aid to all 15 by 50% immediately
Posted by: Frank G   2007-11-29 20:48  

#8  threatening to pull out unless European leaders agreed not to single out Zimbabwe for criticism

OK, fair enough. Don't single out Zim, criticize ALL 15 of them.

Posted by: Canuckistan   2007-11-29 17:27  

#7  You drop out of the conference you forfit your right to development aid. Most of Africa is a sinkhole that nobody would miss. Perhaps an end to aid and catering would result in and end to bribes and payoffs that keep the military in line and might result in some proper government where it is desperately needed.
Posted by: rjschwarz   2007-11-29 16:56  

#6  Follows from yesterday's Mail&Guardian is an example of their rasist, tribal thought process:

Zimbabwe's government newspaper offered a chilly, racially tinged welcome on Tuesday to the new United States envoy.

In his column in the government mouthpiece Herald, political editor Caesar Zvayi said James McGee had criticised Zimbabwe's democratic and human rights record in statements to the US Senate before his arrival and, as an appointee of US President George Bush, was likely "to turn out to be the house Negro". McGee is black.

McGee, who began his assignment in Harare last week after formally presenting his diplomatic credentials to President Robert Mugabe, declined to respond to the state newspaper's remarks.

Though "one of our own, at least as far as skin colour is concerned", McGee was a Vietnam veteran who earned three flying medals for "bombing hapless villagers" there, Zvayi wrote.

But "Zimbabwe welcomes the Son of McGee and hopes he will not shame the ancestors in whose loins he crossed the Atlantic to his adopted home," Zvayi continued.
Posted by: Besoeker   2007-11-29 15:19  

#5  What's not to like, Zimbabwe sounds like its reverting to it's pre-colonial condition to me.
Posted by: bigjim-ky   2007-11-29 15:01  

#4  well said.
Posted by: Whomong Guelph4611   2007-11-29 14:28  

#3  Is it possible that these nations don't want to talk about Zimbabwe because they don't want to do anything about Zimbabwe?

Two words : ethnic. solidarity.

Bob is doing what they all want to do, or already do in some form or an another. Not that that will prevent them from using white guilt to get more money, more aid, more african migrants in Europe,... French-speaking africans have an expression which sez "la connerie des blancs", literally, the stoopidity of whitey. Africa is very resentful of colonization, this resentment fits very well with the soviet long term strategy of putting the third world against the West, and how it has been internalized by the western Enlightned Elites.

They're racist, that's just that. They're racist among blacks, and they're racist against the whites, whom they have almost expelled from africa, even when they were the actual creators of the country, like Rhodesia. And when africans immigrate to Europe, mostly, they still are racist, and they have a sense of entitlement, because all their misery is of course the fault of the whites, so they are due what's for them, and the (white) Enlightened Elites agree with that.

That's not very PC, but that's that, IMHO.
Posted by: anonymous5089   2007-11-29 11:37  

#2  Is it possible that these nations don't want to talk about Zimbabwe because they don't want to do anything about Zimbabwe?

After all, there's probably not a lot they can do except feel guilty about not helping.
Posted by: Mike N.   2007-11-29 02:28  

#1  Birds of the feather?
Posted by: Spike Uniter   2007-11-29 01:18  

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