EU-Africa Summit in Lisbon -demo this Saturday

This Saturday (8 December) will mark the start of the EU-Africa Summit in Lisbon; Robert Mugabe will be hoping to clinch a deal there, brokered by South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, involving a compromise with the (neo-liberal) opposition MDC which will ensure his own survival as president and the end of international sanctions against Zimbabwe.

Mugabe’s appearance at the summit will not go unnoticed, however. Protests are planned in Lisbon, Harare and, among other places, Cardiff.

The Cardiff demo, called by the Zimbabwean Development Support Association, with whom PR have worked to prevent deportations to Zimbabwe, will be at noon on Saturday at Nye Bevan statue, Queen Street.

In a breathless example of hypocricy, Gordon Brown will also be protesting against Mugabe’s presence by boycotting the summit. The UK government’s opposition to Mugabe is supposedly prompted by the seizure of land from farmers of British descent - yet the government was only prevented at the High Court from sending Zimbabwean asylum-seekers back to the same brutally repressive regime, and are now set on deporting them to either Malawi or South Africa, from which they may well be sent back into Mugabe’s terror state.

Cardiff PR, through the social forum which we initiated, are helping to build for Saturday’s event, and encourage all local activists to do the same and ensure South Wales plays its part in reminding the world of Mugabe’s abuses and the need for a socialist solution to Zimbabwe’s problems - not that offered by the friends of the multinationals in the MDC.

Wed 05, December 2007 @ 17:55