The news that Belize’s Pickstock area representative, Hon. Godfrey Smith, traveled last week to Kampala, Uganda, as Lord Michael Ashcroft’s personal guest in the Lord’s private jet, did not come as a shock to Belizeans, because just a couple months ago Smith not only traveled to the Congo as Ashcroft’s guest in the aforementioned private jet, the PUP Deputy Party Leader/Minister of Tourism actually wrote about it in his newspaper column. There is no shame in Mr. Smith’s game. He is an unabashed recruit/cheerleader in Lord Ashcroft’s team.
Kampala, Uganda was the site of the annual meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government. Belize’s Prime Minister/PUP Leader, Rt. Hon. Said Musa, traveled in an official capacity to that summit on commercial jetliners. One wonders what Mr. Musa’s private reaction was on seeing his Deputy Leader arrive as a summit “observer” in the Lord’s Conservative Party entourage.
There are international implications to Mr. Smith’s extraordinary relationship with Lord Ashcroft, who is a big time financier and consultant in the Conservative Party’s election campaign in Great Britain. National elections are due in Britain in a few months. Lord Ashcroft is obsessed with defeating the incumbent Labour Party.
White Britain on a whole has obsessed for the last few years with ousting the leader of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe. The British campaign against Mugabe has crippled that African nation economically, and the British, whose influence over Commonwealth nations derives, in the first instance, from the fact that all these nations were parts of the fabled British Empire, have been fighting to isolate Zimbabwe in the worldwide Commonwealth group, and in the African continent.
Belizeans are not black-conscious like Jamaicans. Belizeans knew very little about apartheid in South Africa, and nothing about Nelson Mandela’s stature and his 27 years in South Africa jail, until American cable television covered Mandela’s release from prison in the early 1990’s. This was not the case in Jamaica, where the people were much in sympathy with the international anti-apartheid struggle. If Belize didn’t know about South Africa and Nelson Mandela, we were more ignorant, if that was possible, about Rhodesia and Robert Mugabe.
The reality was that Rhodesia, under the notorious Ian Smith, was the second most racist and white supremacist nation in southern Africa. Robert Mugabe was a freedom fighter whose fame amongst black Africans was second only to the legend that was Mandela. When he led Zimbabwe to nationhood in 1979, Mugabe invited Jamaican reggay superstar Bob Marley and his Wailers to star at the celebrations, and you will remember the classic hit Robert Nesta created after the Zimbabwe festivities, “Every man has a right to decide his own destiny …”
Mugabe ran into trouble with Britain when he decided to nationalize some of the large tracts of land owned by white farmers in Zimbabwe, and distributed those lands amongst black people. This had been one of the promises of Zimbabwe independence which Mugabe eventually decided to start fulfilling. Those lands had originally been acquired by whites through invasion and conquest of the Rhodesian territory. But, where the British were concerned, Zimbabwe’s political independence was not supposed to change any of that. Mugabe thought otherwise, so the British, the previous rulers of Rhodesia, decided to step on him. The main charge the Brits are using against Mugabe is human rights violations.
We don’t know the details of what is happening in Zimbabwe these days under Robert Mugabe. He is certainly in the middle of great controversy. The British have his back against the wall, and Mugabe is probably doomed. But there is a history to the Zimbabwe situation, and Mugabe is not the total ogre the British are portraying him to be.
This newspaper has no reason to believe that the Hon. Godfrey Smith is a sympathizer with the freedom struggle in Africa. The fact that he is one of Lord Ashcroft’s Belizean favorites in the House of Representatives suggests that Mr. Smith is a collaborator with white supremacy. And yet, Mr. Smith was elected to that House by a constituency which is largely black, and which is exploited by the globalist system in which Lord Ashcroft is a shining star. The voter in Pickstock will need to ask himself/herself: whom will Godfrey represent – me or Market Square?
It seems to us that there is a role in Africa for which Ashcroft is grooming Smith. Mr. Smith has already been the beneficiary of the Lord’s strategic financing. Smith’s huge victory over the PUP Leader Emeritus’ nephew in the 2002 PUP Pickstock constituency convention, was no accident. Godfrey owes Michael favors.
With Smith in his pocket, along with two incumbent UDP area representatives, Lord Ashcroft controls three of the six Southside Belize City area representatives. From our point of view on Partridge Street, we would say to you, roots Southsiders, we have a problem here, three of them in fact.
Power to the people.