British Prime Minister Gordon Brown refused to attend the European Union-African Union Summit to protest the participation of Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe. German chancellor Angela Merkel expressed sympathy with Brown’s decision.
One of Mugabe’s greatest affronts in the eyes of imperialism has been an agrarian reform program redistributing white-owned land to landless Black farmers. Following independence from Britain, white colonizers managed to retain most of the land, owning the best and most fertile grounds.
Britain considers such initiatives an “abuse of power”—a description much better fit for the decades of British colonial plunder in the region, not to mention its push for sanctions that have been devastating for the working poor of Zimbabwe.
