Washington and London’s concerns about escalating violence amid Zimbabwe’s election crisis are being used as a pretext for regime change.
The increased funding of opposition groups and pressure on neighbouring countries to take action against President Mugabe indicate that regime change could soon occur. If successful, the neoliberal economic policies Mugabe rejected and the land reform measures he enacted could be re-instated and resolved by Washington and London under the guise of “democratic reform”.
Analysis
As President Mugabe continues to dispute Zimbabwe’s March 29 presidential and parliamentary election results that saw his ruling ZANU-PF party defeated for the first time by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), there are growing international concerns about an escalation of violence, giving Washington and London a chance to launch a regime change.
The ZANU-PF’s arrest and torture of MDC members and their supporters, the attempted shipment of Chinese arms in April, and the reported presence of Chinese troops in Mutare have stoked fears and raised condemnation from the West. China, guided by its “non-interference” policy, claims the arms shipment was ordered by Mugabe long before the elections and that the West is politicizing the issue.
However China’s financial and military backing of the ZANU-PF dating back to the decade-long war against the white-minority government of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe’s former namesake) and Mugabe’s use of a North Korean trained brigade to crush political rivals in the early 1980s bolster belief that history will repeat itself.
On these grounds, the US and Britain are pushing for intervention in the region by criticizing, pressuring, and appealing to the South African Development Community’s (SADC) member states to take tough action against Mugabe, whom some in the region still view as a “liberation hero”. Washington and London have also pushed for Zimbabwe to be on the UN Security Council’s agenda while U.S. corporate owned media is fomenting calls to arm the opposition.
