In this issue:

Former South African President Mandela Blasts American War Push Against Iraq

U.S. Seen Grabbing West African Oil as Substitute for Fallout from Iraq War

Tony Blair Is Blowing It in Africa

Mugabe Gets Standing Ovation at United Nations

Mandela Takes Up Cause of 34 Million AIDS Orphans

Greenpeace, Environmentalists Accused of Helping To Starve Africa

From the Vol.1,No. 28 issue of Electronic Intelligence Weekly
Africa News Digest

Former South African President Mandela Blasts American War Push Against Iraq

Africa's senior statesman, former South African President Nelson Mandelam is in effect urging President George W. Bush to take the road to peace, and break with the war hawks.

In an interview with Newsweek's Tom Masland in a Johannesburg suburb, Mandela reviews the "catastrophic" nature of U.S. policy in the Iran-Afghanistan region since 1979, and then comments: "If you look at those matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace. Because what [America] is saying, is that if you are afraid of a veto in the Security Council, you can go outside and take action and violate the sovereignty of other countries. This is the message they are sending to the world. That must be condemned in the strongest terms. And you will notice that France, Germany, Russia, China are against this decision."

The interview appeared on Newsweek's website on Sept. 9.

Mandela says that the push toward war is "clearly a decision that is motivated by George W. Bush's desire to please the arms and oil industries in the United States of America."

Later in the interview, Mandela singles out Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld as "the people who are unfortunately misleading the President," and then adds: "Because my impression of the President, is that this is a man with whom you can do business. But it is the men around him who are dinosaurs, who do not want him to belong to the modern age." According to Mandela, the only exception to this, in Bush's immediate circle, is Colin Powell.

On the "Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" issue as such, Mandela first cites the past days' statements of Scott Ritter, debunking all the hype, then stresses that neither Bush nor Tony Blair has "provided any evidence that such weapons exist. But what we know is that Israel has weapons of mass destruction. Nobody talks about that." He denounces this as a double standard, which he sees as racially motivated.

U.S. Seen Grabbing West African Oil as Substitute for Fallout from Iraq War

The South African news service SAPA reports that President Bush's Sept. 13 meeting in New York with African leaders was intended to secure "booming West Africa oil." The U.S. is stepping up overtures to oil-rich West African nations, wrote SAPA on Sept. 12, with plans set to establish a U.S. naval base off West Africa to safeguard the strategic U.S. interest. SAPA previewed the talks Bush and Secretary of State Powell held Sept. 13 with leaders of at least nine West and Central African nations, all either already steady producers or in the thick of West Africa's oil production and exploration boom.

Among the leaders reported to be meeting with Bush were President Fradique de Menezes of Sao Tome and Principe, an island nation off West Africa. Menezes announced Aug. 22 that his country, believed to be sitting on massive and largely untapped oil reserves, had reached agreement with the U.S. for establishment of a naval base there. SAPA claimed that the U.S. has not confirmed plans for the base, although a U.S. general led an American delegation to Sao Tome this summer for talks on the subject. About the agreement, Menezes told journalists the base would be a regional center for aircraft carriers, patrol boats, and U.S. Marines.

Reports from energy consultants in Washington and from West African official sources, said Bush also met with leaders of Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Republic of Congo, and talks were expected between U.S. officials and leaders of Congo, Central African Republic, Chad, and Cameroon. Those nations include hosts of the two largest U.S. capital investments in sub-Saharan Africa— a natural gas plant in Equatorial Guinea, and a Chad-Cameroon pipeline. Presidents of Angola— with Nigeria, Africa's current leader in oil production— and Rwanda and Uganda were also to talk with Bush.

Salih Booker, director of the advocacy group Africa Action, told Associated Press: "Oil largely defines U.S. relations in Africa. Those countries that have oil, regardless of their democratic credentials, will get first service in line over other African countries."

Tony Blair Is Blowing It in Africa

In a column for The Daily News, the Zimbabwe opposition newspaper, on Sept. 10, titled, "Blair Needs To Understand the Mentality of African Politicians," Richard Dowden, executive director of the Royal African Society, paints Tony Blair as a fool who is damaging Anglo-American interests in Africa. Dowden could reasonably be called one of the "smart imperialists."

In his coverage of the recent Johannesburg Earth Summit, Dowden says: "What really hurt Blair last Tuesday was not the cheap lies by Mugabe or Nujoma, nor even the applause they received from some delegates and observers at the summit. It was the fact that no African leader came to Blair's defense, not even South Africa's President, Thabo Mbeki, the conference's host and until recently a 'partner' in Blair's attempts to push Africa's plight up the international agenda. There are good reasons for this.... Solidarity among Africa's rulers remains more important than the pledges they have made to good governance, democracy and respect for human rights."

Recounting Blair's dream of saving poor Africa, the "scar on the conscience of our world," as Blair has termed it, Dowden continued that "only someone who had fallen in love with a TV image of Africa could have said that. That's the Africa of Bob Geldof and Bono and pictures of famine."

"To become an African leader you need to be smart and ruthless. If you are a Western politician who thinks Africa is poor and weak, you are in for a nasty shock. Africa is ruled by men like Mugabe who are rich, tough, and smart. They understand Britain and Europe far better than Blair knows Africa, and using abundant charm, they tell people like Blair what they want to hear.... The more Blair and Jack Straw attacked Mugabe, the happier he was. He made Blair's crusade for Africa look like a crusade to save white farmers and that cost Blair any chance of winning over other leaders. Africans are wary of messianic sounds coming from a Western politician."

Discussing how Blair helped to set up the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), Dowden continues: "African leaders sang this new tune with gusto, and at the G-8 summit world leaders hailed this 'bold and clear-sighted' initiative. [But] if Blair thought Africa's rulers were going to become good little European-style Prime Ministers as a result, he was wrong. If Blair wants to help Africa ... he must learn that poverty of the people does not mean weakness in the leaders and that Africa's leaders do not split neatly into goodies and baddies. Most are mixed, but all dance to a drum that will keep them in power, and that is an African drum, not Blair's."

Mugabe Gets Standing Ovation at United Nations

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe received a standing ovation after his address to the UN General Assembly Sept. 12, similar to the reception he got at last week's Earth Summit, according to The Herald in Harare, which also reports that some sections of the Establishment media have begun to write more favorable reports.

For example, in a report of Sept. 6, the New York Times wrote: "Mr. Mugabe is criticized in the West for encouraging blacks to invade white-owned farms, for hounding journalists and judges, and for jailing opposition party leaders. But to some leaders, particularly in Africa, he is a hero. To them, he is the guerrilla who ended white rule in 1980, the statesman who expanded success to education and health care, and the revolutionary who is returning land stolen from blacks during the British colonial era."

On Sept. 13, the Times reported, "President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe visited City Hall last evening, sparking a raucous display of 1960s vintage Pan-African sentiment." It added that his "attempt to undo lingering traits of British colonialism have made him something of a hero to many other African leaders, a sentiment that was well in evidence last evening in New York."

The developments of the last two weeks were summed up by Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the UN, Dr. Tichaona Jokonya, when he said: "We have made our case and explained it. Now we must find a partnership with those who want to work with us, especially in Asia."

Mandela Takes Up Cause of 34 Million AIDS Orphans

Nelson Mandela addressed the urgent need for helping AIDS orphans, in an impassioned address in Midrand Sept. 10 to the Africa Leadership Consultation, a group that was formed at his and Graca Machel's behest to help children left orphaned by AIDS.

He told the 60-strong audience, which included Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, United Nations Children's Fund executive director Carol Bellamy, and Stephen Lewis, the UN's secretary general's special envoy on HIV/AIDS, that they had to come up with concrete and practical ideas to mobilize and use resources. "We have reached such an advanced stage in this spread of the AIDS pandemic that there is almost no time left for merely feeling, thinking and talking. We are in the middle of a war that is wreaking havoc and destruction. Concrete action is what is required every day and every hour. This meeting, too, should lead to immediate and urgent practical outcomes. Of course we need to do careful planning and deliberation about the actions we shall take, but every moment spent on deliberation that does not lead to decisive action is a moment tragically wasted."

Mandela added that those present needed no lectures on the magnitude of the problem. "No sector of society, and therefore no person, will escape its effects— how directly or indirectly it may be. But it is the effects on children that are probably the most heart-rending and that pose the greatest challenge" to mankind's integrity. "They are affected by actions over which they had no control and in which they had no part. It is a cruel reality that keeps one awake at night when pondering all the aspects and implications of the pandemic."

University of Natal researcher Alan Whiteside, who heads the university's HIV/AIDS research division, noted that before AIDS the percentage of orphans in Africa was 9% and declining, but that now it is at 12% and climbing rapidly. This translates to 34 million orphans.

Greenpeace, Environmentalists Accused of Helping To Starve Africa

The campaign by environmentalist groups to persuade African countries to reject U.S. food aid of genetically modified products is playing with people's lives, U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) chief Andrew Natsios said, after the Zambian government was persuaded to refuse U.S. food aid.

At issue is U.S. genetically modified (GM) corn— perfectly safe and eaten by Americans for the past eight years, but which has been the target of the ecological-fascist liars. Natsios' strong statements were the lead story in the Washington Times Aug. 30. The green groups, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, he said, "are using big-time, very well-organized propaganda the likes of which I have never seen before" in 12 years of American-led famine-relief efforts. Natsios was touring Zambia, where 2.3 million face famine as a result of drought as well as the agricultural chaos in Zimbabwe, reducing imports.

Natsios said of the Greens, "They can play these games with Europeans, who have full stomachs, but it is revolting and despicable to see them do so when the lives of Africans are at stake." The European Union, enthralled by the Greens, has restricted certain imports of GM corn. There is no danger from GM corn; the gene modification that takes place is the same as that of natural cross-pollination in corn, except that the modification is deliberately directed.

For specifics on the science of GM foods, see the article by Dr. Channaputra Prakash of Tuskegee Institute, "Genetically Engineered Crops Can Feed the World!" in 21st Century Science & Technology magazine, Summer 2000. The full text is available at www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/biotech.html For specifics on the politics of biotech cartel food control and the creation of false issues, see Colin Lowry's "We Can Feed the World!" in 21st Century Science and Technology, Summer 1997.

For southern Africa, the U.S. accounts for half of the food relief pledged. Natsios, the current AID director, while attacking anti-science NGOs, is at present restricting U.S. international food donations to the point that the World Food Program announced last week it would cut food supplies to millions in North Korea.

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