By Merlyn Mwanza
Socialist Party (SP) leader Dr Fred M’membe says Africans must not deceive themselves because imperialists are here to advance their mineral interests, and are busy putting puppets as presidents all over the bantustans they have created on the continent.
Speaking during a recent event in South Africa, Dr M’membe said imperialists were here for the Minerals which he said they were ready to kill.
He said they were here again to set up military bases and military offices again for minerals, saying wherever they have mineral interests they always take an army.
“And all the time they find puppets to recruit from among our people. The slave hunters many were Africans. They used to hunt their fellow brothers and sisters for very few pieces of silver,” Dr M’membe said. “They have come again, they are putting puppets as President’s all over the bantustans they have created in Africa. Puppets funded by the same mining corporations. Anglo America today is still creating puppets. We know Anglo American is an offspring of the British South African company that colonized the so-called bantustan which I call my country, Zambia. The first coloniser of Zambia was Cecil Rhodes and his company. That was the first coloniser, not the British government, from 1891, six years after the Berlin conference to 1924. Zambia, the territory called Zambia today, the bantustan called Zambia, was ruled by Cecil Rhodes and his company, mining company.”
He said later Rhodes’ company was sold to Oppenheimer to become Anglo America, and that today they have a foundation, the Brenthurst foundation that is funding “puppets to become African presidents” and that Africans were being made to vote for them.
Dr M’membe said they were funding puppets in Zambia South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya among others.
“And who is at the head of this Anglo American corporation foundation, the Brenthurst foundation? Who is the chairperson? They have gotten another puppet, a former president of the great country of the great bantustan of Nigeria, Obasanjo,” Dr M’membe said, adding that “they were creating foundations to even train young leaders to pick them up from an early age under the leadership programmes like the Mandela Foundation.”
He said the imperialists were coming to Africa under the guise of protecting the continent from the Russians and Chinese, wondering how really those two countries were threatening African countries.
“Who are they protecting us from? And they don’t go where there are no minerals. Their focus is where there are strategic minerals. Today their focus is on DRC, a country they have never given peace,” Dr M’membe said. “…They don’t care about the Congolese. They are dying everyday with the same arms they provide. For how long? 500, 600 years they have been doing the same thing to us. Are we going to let them continue to do so? It gets dark sometimes but the morning comes. Our morning must come. Wherever there is a crucification there must be a resurrection. Our resurrection must come.”
He said Africa’s time to arise from the sleep has come, and there was inspiration all over in the likes of Thomas Sankara, Chris Hanni, Patrice Lumumba and others.
He said the western countries who shared Africa among themselves divided the continent into bantustans, taking away the sovereignty in the first place and that they were brutal in their war against “our sovereignty.”
He said all those who tried to advance the struggle for Africa’s sovereignty were killed, including Lumumba, Samora Machel, Gaddafi and others, saying the same people were coming back today telling “us they want to set up military bases and military offices to defend our sovereignty.”
“Really? Our sovereignty? Definitely not our sovereignty. They are advancing something else. The same interests that made them turn us into bantustans is what they are trying to advance and defend. They are defending American interests. They are defending French interests. They are defending British interests,” Dr M’membe said, adding that they have never been there in the fight against colonialism, neocolonialism “because it was our fight against them. They can’t fight against themselves. Since when did they commit suicide to be on our side against themselves?”
Dr M’membe said even in the fight against apartheid in South Africa, they were not with the people, as the French, German, American and British histories were well known in that country, and it was a history that opposed African sovereignty, but that their descendants were here again saying they have come to defend “our sovereignty.”
“From who? The whole of Southern Africa is littered with mass graves. Even those who tried to free themselves from apartheid brutality to go to Zambia to wage a struggle there, they were followed and killed by the same people with the participation of the same people who are today coming to tell us they are here to defend our sovereignty,” said Dr M’membe.
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