Sept. 21, 2023—Three African leaders, who together had recently attended the recent Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg, addressed the United Nations General Assembly today. Certainly they found colonialism to be oppressive and destructive, but all three were not ‘punching from below.’
Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Dambudzo-Mnangagwa strongly condemned “tendencies by some powerful countries who preach peace, human rights and democracy and yet clandestinely fund conflicts and the unconstitutional changes of governments, for their own narrow interests.” The Central African Republic President Faustin Archange Touadera put on the table, that the UN’s supposed goals for the elimination of hunger, poverty, and inequality can’t be realized “when certain States, from the height of their political, economic and military power, constantly agitate coercive diplomacy or exploit international financial institutions for the purpose of imposing economic, financial and commercial blockades against countries made poor by slavery, colonization and imperialism?”
But Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye posed a way out for the bankrupt West. Earlier, at St Petersburg, he had explained: “I would never call Africa poor, this is a common delusion. On the contrary, it is a very rich continent.” African states should therefore “contribute to the development of all humanity.”
One might think that the good President was ‘punching above his weight.’ And, indeed, Burundi is a small, landlocked, poor country in Africa with only 11% of its population having access to electricity. He certainly is not oblivious to what “neocolonialism” has done in ravaging his country and his continent. Today he described it in terms of the interference in the internal affairs of nations, the unfair remuneration of raw materials, and the unfair conditionalities of Bretton Woods financial institutions (IMF and World Bank). But he also explained a Kirundi saying, “ntawutungira mu boro” — meaning, “prosperity is only lasting if it is shared.” This “reminds us that investing in the prosperity of your neighbor truly guarantees the security and sustainability of your own progress.” Thus, the offer is on the table from the wealthy Global South to the panicky, financially and morally bankrupt nations of the elite West: ‘We don’t hate you for your selfish, destructive colonialism, because it is time for lasting prosperity.’
Otherwise, there’s evidence that the geopolitical game is on its last legs. Poland told Ukraine that no more weapons would be arriving and the U.S. House of Representatives told President Zelensky that he would not be addressing that body. It should not be missed that U.S. Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio called out the thuggish, ‘thought control’ operation run, where the ‘Big Brother’ thought-police liquidate those they designate as “information agents.”
Vance’s letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, asking whether the US was funding such operations, was long overdue but very welcome: “I worry American resources could be supporting violence or the threat of violence against people for speaking their mind…. [A]ny critic of America’s incoherent policy in Ukraine has been slandered as a propagandist, including multiple presidential candidates and American journalists.”
The declared policy of Kiev’s “Center for Countering Disinformation” (CCD) has been, for more than a year now, that “Russian propagandists” — that is, any persons anywhere in the world who write or speak critically of the policy to break Russia, to extend NATO, to fight to the last Ukrainian, etc. — are to be designated as ‘disinformation warriors’ or ‘information agents’ and treated as an enemy warrior to be neutralized. The CCD, an operation of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (NSDC), compiles a list of such persons for Ukraine’s security services to act upon.
The world cannot think their way out of a paper bag in such fear-induced passivity. The leaders in the Global South, or the Global Majority, are on the move. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth—and they might save a bunch of panicky Western nations in the process.
