By Merlyn Mwanza
Socialist Party (SP) leader Dr Fred M’membe has questioned what it is that Zambia has to do with American security that they are setting up military facilities in here.
Featuring on Russia TV, Dr M’membe while the United States of America could not allow Russia or China to set up military facilities near its borders in Canada and Mexico, they themselves were setting up military bases everywhere “including my country Zambia.”
“They are setting up which they are calling a military office but we know it’s a military facility. What has Zambia got to do with the United States Security?” he said.
Dr M’membe said whereas Russia and China have been dealing with Africa through the liberation struggle and other spheres, the Americans have never been on the side of the continent but with those who have been brutalising and dehumanising Africans.
He said the Americans supported the apartheid regime, supported the arrest of Nelson Mandela, backed the colonialists and even supported the racist Rhodesia regime which carried out bombing raids into Zambia.
Those in the west and their supporters have argued that China has been getting Africa into a debt, but Dr M’membe said Chinese debt accounted for only 30 percent of Zambia’s foreign debt with most of it being in western hands and that people could easily associate Chinese debt with tangible things including hospitals, hydropower stations, schools and rails, including free Chinese gifts like the biggest stadium in the country (Heroes), second biggest hospital (Levy Mwanawasa), and the biggest conference Hall.
He said when USA Vice-President Kamala Harris arrives in Zambia she will land at the airport built by Chinese, urging that the continent needed more cooperation with China’s allied neighbor Russia, however, pointing out that Russia built a university in solidarity with Africans in Russia.
Asked on the US$150 million pledged by the USA for security in the Sahel region, Dr M’membe said the amount paled in comparison to the billions they were giving Ukraine in their proxy war with Russia, adding that they created the instability in the Sahel region after they murdered Libyan leader Muamar Gaddaffi.
On the arrest warrant issued on Russian President Vladmir Putin by the International Criminal Court, Dr M’membe described the move as mischievous and malicious and lacking any legal basis as the people who should be arrested is George Bush, Tony Blair and even Bill Clinton for illegally invading Iraq, Afghanistan and the murder of Gadaffi, saying US administrations and their western juniors have engaged in the assassination of African leaders but were not indicted by ICC.
He said the west did not want war to end in Ukraine as they are the ones who started it and are sustaining it in their proxy war against Russia, saying their interest was not even the Ukrainian people but their own needs.
