(GB-N.com) – Peter Godwin has had a makeover. Godwin, a one-time hatchet man for arch-racist and mass murderer, Ian Smith, is now “an award winning foreign correspondent, author, documentary film maker and screenwriter,” according to his biography, provided by the Carnegie Council, an American non-profit organization that is considered liberal in its political views.
Ian Smith was the prime minister of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe and Peter Godwin was a member of his police force; a police force which, along with Smith’s army, killed over 700,000 Africans during the Zimbabweans’ valiant and protracted struggle for national liberation.
The Carnegie Council, an organization that boasts of being ‘the voice for ethics in international policy,’ conveniently omitted that inconvenient fact of Godwin’s membership of Ian Smith’s security apparatus of state terrorism and mass murder at a recent forum promoting his dross: The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe. Providing Godwin a platform to spew his drivel is akin to inviting a former Nazi-camp guard to promote his book about Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians.
In fact, I asked Joanne Myers, Director of Public Affairs Programs at the Carnegie Council, if she would invite a former Nazi-camp guard to address her members about Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians? Her response. Dead silence!
Mr. Godwin, unsurprisingly, is also a frequent contributor to the New York Times, another outlet for liberal views in the United States. The New York Times usually provides a platform for liberal writers to absolve European and American governments of their crime of enslavement and mass murder of African people.
American liberals, according to author and scholar, Ayi Kwei Armah, referring to one of his characters in his forthcoming book, The Resolutionaries, ‘are the world’s largest tribe of innocents.
Individuals not connected with murder, alone or in mass. They are unrelated to the killing of Amerindians, the pillage of continents, the stealing of people’s land and lives. For them, the enslavement of Africans happened so long ago it can’t touch them, though their legacy includes fortunes started by slave-trading ancestors.’
Peter Godwin falls into the above category of liberals. Liberals who go about their daily lives prating about democracy and human rights, blithely indifferent to the death and destruction that their kith and kin have wreaked on the peoples of Africa.
Godwin boasted that “white liberals returned to Zimbabwe in the 1980s” to help in nation-building because President Robert “Mugabe’s reconciliation with the white farmers was a social contract that superseded” the historical injustices of the Smith regime. In other words, white people returned, expecting black people in Zimbabwe to shake their hands and forget about the white theft of their patrimony and mass murder of their country men and women.
It didn’t quite turn out that way, ergo, Peter Godwin, the crusader for human rights and democracy in Zimbabwe.
White liberals promote Godwin as an authority on Zimbabwe. They think so highly of him that they gave him the George Orwell prize for his memoir, which is understandable given that his views on Zimbabwe are decidedly Orwellian.
Seeking to diminish Zimbabwe’s revolutionary credentials, Godwin ranted that militants of the African National Congress (ANC) were not “allowed to be based in Zimbabwe” during the ANC’s struggle against white supremacy and state terrorism in South Africa.
The facts: In August, 1981, ANC representative, Joe Gqabi, was killed in Harare, Zimbabwe by a South African bomb which was planted in his car.
In May, 1987, the wife of an ANC official was killed by a South African bomb in Harare.
In May, 1987, ANC offices were bombed in Harare by South African agents.
In January, 1988, ANC offices were attacked with grenades by South African agents.
In January, 1988, two ANC members were killed with a car bomb by South African agents.
The above is not an exhaustive account of Zimbabwe’s solidarity with the ANC, but the facts contradict Godwin’s claim that ANC representatives were not welcomed by the Zimbabwean government.
The lies continue. According to Godwin, in 2000, when Zimbabwe’s land reclamation program kicked into high gear, 500,000 African farm workers opposed the policy. In his fantasy world, black people in Zimbabwe preferred to remain as employees of white farmers instead of controlling their own land.
Well, that was his fantasy and not the aspirations of Africans, forced to live on Native Reserves by his erstwhile boss, Ian Smith, eking out a living as surfs for white people.
In accordance with the historical aspirations of Africans in Zimbabwe, the land reclamation program provided over 300,000 Zimbabwean families with land for small farming. That’s approximately two million people. In addition, over 40,000 African entrepreneurs are now engaged in commercial farming. Now, more than ten years later, Zimbabwe’s farmers produce most of the country’s food, according to a recent study.
Europe and America have imposed “sanctions against the elites” crowed Godwin, referring to Zimbabwe political leadership. Not quite, ex-police officer Godwin. Legislation in the United States prohibits the IMF and World Bank from lending money to the Zimbabwean government which, according to U.S. congressman, Donald Payne, “left (Zimbabwe’s) economy in shambles.” It is therefore the people of Zimbabwe who are the victims of European and American economic aggression, not only the so-called elites.
Since 2000, white liberals have developed a system of myths about Zimbabwe in service of white settler interests. They have elaborated these myths under the auspices of human rights and democracy. What they do not understand is that the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe was a war to own and control the country’s land and resources, not a fight for democracy.
The Zimbabwean government understands that if the historical aspirations of its people aren’t addressed, the judgment of posterity and history will be cold, harsh and accurate. The government also understands that hunger and poverty are not relieved by philosophical prating and academic posturing. Armed with that understanding, the Zimbabwean government has, over the past 20 years, transferred land from the white minority to the African majority.
Godwin’s rants against Zimbabwe are mere puritanical drivel. They cloak his real role – a shill for white settler interests in Zimbabwe.
Copyright 2011 www.globalbreakingnews.com
