[Well… obviously… in Mugabe’s Marxist views… Democracy is anything he wants it to be. Jan]

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party has accused some non-governmental organisations, labour bodies and South Africa’s main opposition of plotting to unseat his government with the help of the United States and Britain.

In its manifesto released at the weekend for the March 31 parliamentary vote, the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) said Western “sponsored phoney non-governmental organisations have been campaigning for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)”.

The manifesto said the NGOs, “using their pseudo-humanitarian face and the abundant resources made available to them through organisations like the British
Westminister Foundation,” had campaigned “to penetrate, inveigle and subvert communities into supporting the opposition”.

Zimbabwe’s parliament late last year approved a controversial Bill aimed at curbing the actitives of NGOs, but Mugabe is yet to sign it into law.

The Bill seeks to restrict foreign NGOs involved in human rights work or issues of governance, and cut foreign funding to local groups engaged in similar work.

“Apart from a proliferation of such political NGOs, the same [Western] forces have infiltrated the upper echelons of the ZCTU (Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions) alongside South Africa’s labour centre Cosatu [Congress of South African Trade Unions], against the Zimbabwean people,” it said.

This month alone, Zimbabwe has deported 17 trade unionists, 15 of them members of South Africa’s largest trade union federation a week ago, who tried to conduct a fact-finding mission to the country.

Two members of Southern Africa Trade Union Coordination Council, the region’s umbrella trade union federation, were also been expelled separately when they tried to enter the country for talks with the ZCTU on setting up a trade union school in Zimbabwe.

Zanu-PF said Cosatu and ZCTU are coordinated by the “right-wing CIA-funded International Conferderation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU)” while blasting South Africa’s main opposition Democratic Alliance party which is planning its own fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe.

“And of course the political home to racist white South Africa, the Democratic Alliance of Tony Leon, has adopted the two unions … [with] the same objective of regime change,” said the manifesto.

But Mugabe’s party vowed it would “bury” the opposition at next month’s general elections, despite the alleged support from non-governmental organisations and labour bodies.

“Zanu-PF will win the forthcoming parliamentary elections with a landslide, leaving [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair defeated, lonely and isolated in Europe, over Zimbabwe,” it said.

“Even with the help of NGOs the MDC will fail. The MDC will be buried by the people’s landslide poll.

In his preamble to the manifesto document, Mugabe, who launched his party’s election campaign on Friday, said the West was not qualified to teach him about democracy.

“Today we tell them boldly they have no lessons on democracy to impart to us. They cannot teach us democracy today. “They had none to give us for nearly a century of misrule here. We scoff at and reject such rank hypocrisy,” he said. – Sapa-AFP

Source: Daily Mail & Guardian
URL: http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/br…/p>