EMBARRASSING PUPPETEERING!
By Fred M’membe, President of the Socialist Party
On March 29-30, 2023, the United States will co-host the second Summit for Democracy with the governments of Costa Rica, the Netherlands, Republic of Korea, and Republic of Zambia.
But what democracy can the United States government really promote or advance for an African country?
How many of our elected leaders and governments has the United States toppled and killed?
On February 24, 1966, the fate of Africa was irrevocably altered when the United States CIA sponsored a coup d’état against Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the elected Prime Minister of Ghana and Pan-Africanist visionary, who was voted “Africa’s Man of the Millennium”. At least 1,600 Ghanaians died in the coup.
In 1999, these claims were confirmed when the US government declassified the Western-orchestrated plot to get rid of the man who was, “doing more to undermine our interests than any other black African”.
The US government was determined to depose Dr Nkrumah before he managed to unite Africa under one government, working with allies such as Great Britain and Canada to finance, mastermind, and guide the coup.
According to the US State Department at the time, Nkrumah’s “overpowering desire to export his brand of nationalism unquestionably made Ghana one of the foremost practitioners of subversion in Africa”.
They were behind the toppling and assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the elected Prime Minister of Congo.
Files of importance to the CIA mission to assassinate Lumumba include the 1975-76 US Senate Church Committee’s investigation of CIA assassination plots against Lumumba, the report of a Belgian parliamentary inquiry in 2001, Congo Station Chief Larry Devlin’s 2007 memoir, and the long-awaited appearance in 2013 of a “retrospective” Congo volume in the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States series, which contains extensive CIA operational documents from the 1960s.
They played a key role in the toppling and assassination of Muamar Gaddafi.
The list is long, and their endless efforts at regime change in Zimbabwe are well known. To this very day they are still seeking regime change there.
Since the 19th century, the United States government has participated and interfered in – both overtly and covertly – the replacement of several foreign governments. In the latter half of the 19th century, the US government initiated actions for regime change mainly in Latin America and the southwest Pacific, including the Spanish-American and Philippine-American wars.
At the onset of the 20th century, the United States shaped or installed governments in many countries around the world, including neighbours Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.
The United States expanded the geographic scope of its actions beyond traditional area of operations, Central America and the Caribbean. Significant operations included the United States and United Kingdom-orchestrated 1953 Iranian coup d’état, the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion targeting Cuba, and support for the overthrow of Sukarno by General Suharto in Indonesia. In addition, the US has interfered in the national elections of countries, including Italy in 1948, the Philippines in 1953, Japan in the 1950s and 1960s and Lebanon in 1957. According to one study, the US performed at least 81 overt and covert known interventions in foreign elections during the period 1946–2000. According to another study, the US engaged in 64 covert and six overt attempts at regime change.
The United States has led or supported wars to determine the governance of a number of countries – Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.
Again, what democracy can the United States really teach us or advance in our poor countries?
This is the country the Zambian government of Mr Hakainde Hichilema has hired itself to as a puppet. What a shame! What an embarrassment!
What democracy are they advancing or promoting with the United States? The AFRICOM type of democracy!
We urge them to retreat from this embarrassing neocolonial mentality and imperialist puppet, lackey behaviour.
They are stripping our country and our people of the anti-imperialist badge of honour they have worn since independence. For what? We have become the continent’s laughing stock.
