John Pilger: The silent war on Africa
By ACAS | 7 July 2008
Mail and Guardian Online
John Pilger
Jul 07 2008
‘Zimbabwe shows Africa is still in the despots’ grip”, said the headline in the London Observer over an article by Keith Richburg. “Thank God that I am an American,” writes this former foreign editor of the Washington Post: An African-American, Richburg says he is very pleased he is not an African. He reminds me of middle-class black Americans I met when I first travelled in Africa. They were usually tourists looking for their roots and in their behaviour, reactions and ignorance, they demonstrated how quintessentially American they were. For them, Africa was another planet. A decade ago, writes Richburg, Zimbabwe was “a humming economy” with “impressive growth”. No, it was not. In 1998 Zimbabwe was a profoundly unequal society up to its ears in debt, with the International Monetary Fund waging war on its economy, waving off investors and freezing loans.