[R-G] Mugabe’s Biggest Sin

[Anthony Fenton]

Mugabe’s Biggest Sin
Anglo-American and Chinese interests clash over Zimbabwe’s strategic  
mineral wealth

by F. William Engdahl

Global Research, July 30, 2008
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ENG20080730&articleId=9707

Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, presides over one of the  
world’s richest minerals treasures, the Great Dyke region, which cuts  
a geological swath across the entire land from northeast to southwest.  
The real background to the pious concerns of the Bush Administration  
for human rights in Zimbabwe in the past several years is not Mugabe’s  
possible election fraud or his expropriation of white settler farms.  
It is the fact that Mr. Mugabe has been quietly doing business, a lot  
of it, with the one country which has virtually unlimited need of  
strategic raw materials Zimbabwe can provide—China. Mugabe’s Zimbabwe  
is, along with Sudan, on the central stage of the new war over control  
of strategic minerals of Africa between Washington and Beijing, with  
Moscow playing a supporting role in the drama. The stakes are huge.

Zimbabwe’s President, Robert Mugabe is a very very bad man. This we  
all know from reading the newspapers or hearing the pronouncements of  
George W. Bush, earlier Britain’s Tony Blair and more recently Gordon  
Brown. In their eyes he has sinned badly. They charge that he is a  
dictator; that he has expropriated, often with violence, the farms of  
whites as part of land reform; they claim he rigged his re-election by  
vote fraud and violence; that he has ruined the economy of Zimbabwe.

Whether Robert Mugabe deserves to be in Washington’s honor roll of  
villains alongside Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, Milosevic,  
Ahmadinejad, and Adolf Hitler, however, it is not the reason  
Washington and London have made Zimbabwe regime change priority number  
one for their Africa policy.

What his sin is seems to have more to do with his attempts to get out  
from under Anglo-American neo-colonial serfdom dependency and to  
pursue a national economic development independent of the  
International Monetary Fund and World Bank. His real sin seems to be  
the fact that he has turned to the one nation that offers his  
government credits and soft loans for economic development with no  
strings attached—The Peoples’ Republic of China.

Western media accounts conveniently tend to omit the second major  
party to what is a huge tug of war between Anglo-American interests  
and China to get control of Zimbabwe’s vast mineral wealth. We should  
keep in mind that for Washington there are always "good dictators" and  
"bad dictators." The difference is whether the given dictator serves  
US national interests or not. Mugabe clearly is in the latter category.

Cecil Rhodes’ legacy

Zimbabwe is the name of what under the era of British Imperialism a  
century ago was named Rhodesia. The name Rhodesia came from the  
British imperial strategist and miner, Cecil Rhodes, founder of the  
Rhodes scholarships to Oxford, and author of a plan for a vast private  
African zone, to be chartered from the Queen of England, from Egypt to  
South Africa. Cecil Rhodes created the British South Africa Company,  
modeled on the East India Company, along with his partner, L. Starr  
Jameson of Jameson Raid notoriety, to exploit the mineral riches of  
Rhodesia. It controlled what was later named Northern Rhodesia  
(Zambia) and Southern Rhodesia-Nyasaland. The model was that the  
British Government would assume all risks to militarily defend Rhodes’  
looting while Rhodes and his London bankers, above all Lord  
Rothschild, who was a close associate, would assume all the gains of  
the business.

Rhodes, a seasoned geologist, knew well that there was a remarkable  
geological fault running from the mouth of the Nile at the Gulf of  
Suez south through Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, down through today’s  
Zimbabwe on to South Africa. Rhodes had already instigated several  
wars to gain control of the diamonds of Kimberly and the gold of  
Witwatersrand in South Africa. This geological phenomenon he, as well  
as enterprising German explorers, had discovered in the 1880’s. They  
named it the Great Rift Valley.

Rhodesia, like South Africa after the bloody Boer wars, was settled by  
white settlers to secure future minerals gains for allied interests of  
the City of London, mainly those of the powerful Oppenheimer family  
and their gold and diamond enterprises in the region.

In 1962 when Africa was undergoing the wave of national liberation  
from colonial rule, a wave calculatedly supported by "non-colonial  
power" Washington, Rhodesia was one of the last bastions, along with  
former British colony South Africa, of white Apartheid rule. Whites in  
Rhodesia constituted only 1-2% of the total population so their  
methods of holding on to power were rather ruthless.

White supremacist Prime Minister, Ian Smith, declared Rhodesian  
independence from Britain in 1965 rather than agree to the slightest  
compromise on race or power sharing with black nationalists. Britain  
got UN trade sanctions imposed to force Smith to buckle under. Despite  
sanctions, there was considerable support from conservative business  
interests in London. Britain’s Tiny Rowland, head of the Lonrho mining  
conglomerate, secured the bulk of his African profits from Rhodesian  
copper mining and related ventures under the Smith regime. The City of  
London knew very well what riches lay in Rhodesia. The question was  
how to secure enduring control. Smith’s Rhodesian backers had little  
interest in giving it all to London.

Following a long and bloody struggle, in 1980 the leader of the black  
African Popular Front coalition, Robert Mugabe, overwhelmingly won  
election as the first Prime Minister of a new Zimbabwe. Twenty eight  
years later, the same Robert Mugabe is under escalating attack from  
the West, especially Zimbabwe’s former colonial master, England,  
including strong economic sanctions designed to bring the country to  
the brink of collapse, to force him to open the economy to foreign  
(read Anglo-American and allied) investment. Ironically, the issue  
seems not all that different from the Ian Smith era: London and US  
control of the resources of the rich land, and Zimbabwean efforts to  
resist that control.

The Great Dyke

Within Zimbabwe, a portion of the rich Great Rift is called the Great  
Dyke, an intrusive geological treasure zone running over 530  
kilometers from the northeast to the southwest of the country, in  
places up to 12 kilometers wide. A river runs along the fault and the  
region is volcanically active. Here also lie vast deposits of  
chromium, of copper, platinum and other metals.

The US State Department, as well as London, is aware of the vast  
minerals and other riches of Zimbabwe. It states in a recent report on  
Zimbabwe,

"Zimbabwe is endowed with rich mineral resources. Exports of gold,  
asbestos, chrome, coal, platinum, nickel, and copper could lead to an  
economic recovery one day...The country is richly endowed with coal- 
bed methane gas that has yet to be exploited.

With international attractions such as Victoria Falls, the Great  
Zimbabwe stone ruins, Lake Kariba, and extensive wildlife, tourism  
historically has been a significant segment of the economy and  
contributor of foreign exchange. The sector has contracted sharply  
since 1999, however, due to the country's declining international  
image.(sic).

Energy Resources

With considerable hydroelectric power potential and plentiful coal  
deposits for thermal power station, Zimbabwe is less dependent on oil  
as an energy source than most other comparably industrialized  
countries, but it still imports 40% of its electric power needs from  
surrounding countries--primarily Mozambique. Only about 15% of  
Zimbabwe's total energy consumption is accounted for by oil, all of  
which is imported. Zimbabwe imports about 1.2 billion liters of oil  
per year. Zimbabwe also has substantial coal reserves that are  
utilized for power generation, and coal-bed methane deposits recently  
discovered in Matabeleland province are greater than any known natural  
gas field in Southern or Eastern Africa. In recent years, poor  
economic management and low foreign currency reserves have led to  
serious fuel shortages."

In short, chrome, copper, gold, platinum, huge hydroelectric power  
potential and vast coal reserves are what is at stake for Washington  
and London in Zimbabwe. The country also has unverified reserves of  
uranium, something in big demand today for nuclear power generation.

It is clear of late that so long as the tenacious Mugabe is running  
things, not the Anglo-Americans, but rather the Chinese, are  
Zimbabwe’s preferred business partners. This seems to be Mugabe’s  
greatest sin. He’s not reading from the right program as George W.  
Bush’s friends see it. His real sin seems to be turning East not West  
for economic and investment help.

The Chinese connection

During the Cold War China recognized and supported Robert Mugabe. In  
recent years as China’s search for secure raw materials escalated its  
foreign diplomacy, relations have become stronger. According to the  
Chinese media, China has invested more in Zimbabwe than any other  
nation.

Already back in July 2005 as Tony Blair turned the sanctions screws  
tighter on Zimbabwe, Mugabe flew to Beijing to meet with the top  
Chinese leadership, where he reportedly sought an emergency loan of US 
$1 billion and asked increased Chinese involvement in the economy.

It began to bear fruit. In June 2006 state--owned Zimbabwean  
businesses signed a number of energy, mining and farming deals worth  
billions of dollars with Chinese companies. The largest was with China  
Machine-Building International Corporation, for a $1,3bn contract to  
mine coal and build thermal-power generators in Zimbabwe, to reduce  
Zimbabwe’s electricity shortage. The Chinese company had already built  
thermal-power stations in Nigeria and Sudan, and had been involved in  
mining projects in Gabon.

In 2007 the Chinese government donated farm machinery worth $25  
million to Zimbabwe, including 424 tractors and 50 trucks, as part of  
a $58 million loan to the Zimbabwean government. The Mugabe  
administration had previously seized white-owned farms and gave them  
to blacks, damaging machinery in the process. In return for the  
equipment and the loan the Zimbabwean government will ship 30 million  
kilograms of tobacco to the People's Republic of China.

Other Zimbabwe-China agreements included a deal between the Zimbabwe  
Mining Development and China’s Star Communications, forming a joint  
venture to mine chrome, with funding from the China Development Bank.  
Zimbabwe also agreed to import road-building, irrigation and farming  
equipment from the China National Construction and Agricultural  
Machinery Import and Export Corporation and China Poly Group. Zimbabwe  
also relies on China for imports of telecommunications equipment,  
military hardware and many other critical items it can no longer  
import from the west because of the British-led sanctions.

Relations have become so important that Zimbabwe’s police have a  
dedicated "China desk" to protect Chinese interests in the country.

In April 2007 the chairman of China’s top political advisory body, Jia  
Qinglin, head of the National Committee of the Chinese Peoples’  
Political Consultative Conference, flew to Harare to meet with Mugabe.  
It was a follow-up to the 2006 Beijing China-Africa Cooperation Summit  
where the Chinese government invited the heads of more than 40 African  
states to discuss relations. Africa has become a diplomatic and  
economic priority for China and its economy.

At that time, Beijing got an open invitation to help develop dormant  
mines in the country. The deputy speaker of Zimbabwe's parliament  
called for more Chinese investment in the country's mining sector,  
according to China's Xinhua news agency. Zimbabwe's mining laws were  
changed to allow the government to reallocate mining claims that were  
not being exploited.

Mining generates half of Zimbabwe's export revenue. It is the only  
sector in the country that still has foreign investors after the  
collapse of the main agricultural sector. Western companies with  
mining claims in Zimbabwe were not exploiting them. "We would appeal  
to the Chinese government to come in full force to exploit these  
minerals," Zimbabwean Deputy Parliamentary Speaker, Kumbirai Kangai  
said to the official Xinhua.

Kangai assured potential Chinese investors that they would not expose  
themselves to legal action if they took over claims held by Western  
companies.

A few months after, in December 2007, Chinese company, Sinosteel  
Corporation, acquired 67 percent stake in Zimbabwe's leading  
ferrochrome producer and exporter Zimasco Holdings. Zimasco Holdings  
is the fifth largest high carbonated ferrochrome producer in the  
world. It used to produce 210,000 tons of high-carbon ferrochrome per  
year, nearly all of it along the mineral-rich Great Dyke, accounting  
for 4 percent of global ferrochrome production.

Zimasco has also the world's second largest reserves of chrome, after  
South Africa. It was formerly owned by Union Carbide Corporation, now  
part of Dow Chemicals Corp.

Oh, oh! Alarm bells went ringing in London and in Washington at that  
news.

China clearly views Africa as a central part of its strategic plan,  
most notably for its oil reserves and vital raw materials such as  
copper, chrome, nickel. The continent is also at the same time  
becoming an important region for Chinese manufactured exports. But the  
raw materials battle is at the heart, and the real reason by all  
accounts, why Washington recently decided to form a separate Africa  
Command in the Pentagon.

Controlling China’s economic emergence is an un-stated strategic  
priority of United States foreign and military policy and has been  
since before September 11, 2001. The only delicate point in the  
business is the fact that China, with well over $1.7 trillions of  
foreign exchange reserves, most believed in form of US Treasury  
securities, could trigger a complete dollar panic and further collapse  
of the US economy should she decide for political reasons it were too  
risky to continue holding its hundreds of billions of US dollar debt.  
In effect, by buying US Government debt with its trade surpluses,  
China has been indirectly financing US policies counter to Chinese  
national interest such as the Iraq war, or even the $100 million or so  
annually that Condi Rice’s State Department spends on Tibet.

China is refusing to play by the rules of the Anglo-American neo- 
colonial game. It does not seek IMF or World Bank approval before  
dealing with African countries. It makes soft loans, regardless who  
might be running the country. In this it does nothing different from  
Washington or London. The Chinese see American influence in Africa  
less entrenched than in the rest of the world, thus offering unique  
opportunities for China to pursue its economic interests.

It may or may not be cynical. It may be Realpolitik. If it results in  
the ability of certain African countries to use China as a political  
counterweight to the one-sided Anglo-American domination of the  
Continent, that itself could be a major benefit to Africans depending  
on how they use it.

Clearly, it has been extremely positive for Chinese access to vital  
economic minerals for its economy as well as oil from places such as  
Darfur and southern Sudan, or Nigeria.

Mineral wealth has once more put Africa on center stage of a battle  
for mineral riches between East and West. This time, unlike during the  
Cold War era, however, Beijing is playing with far more assets, and  
Washington with far less.

F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil  
Politics and the New World Order (Pluto Press), and Seeds of  
Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (www.globalresearch.ca 
). He may be contacted through his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net 
  .