What do Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe have in common? They are both former British colonies where the British imperialists still think they have the right to call the shots. And the U.S. corporate rulers, who more often than not use Britain as a partner in dominating Africa, are helping to shape public opinion in favor of British intervention through their powerful monopoly on the dissemination of world news.

Take the struggle in Sierra Leone. British troops are now in that country, supposedly as UN "peace keepers." They recently led an offensive against an insurgent movement. All the media here treated this as a welcome development. No information was given about how many people were killed in this offensive, or how they died.

Every story about Sierra Leone attacks the guerrilla movement for its supposed brutality. None even mention that Britain has a long history of appalling brutality against African and Asian peoples. No, the assumption is that somehow those who fight with knives and machetes are bad, while those who fight with machine guns and helicopters are good.

What are the goals of the two sides? Britain claims a "humanitarian" role. But because of its many decades of colonial domination, Sierra Leone is the poorest country in Africa. The pro-British government there reflects the small enclave of Freetown, the capital, where life is completely different than in the rest of the country. While Freetown has been a pleasant holiday resort for tourists, especially British officials looking for "R&R," in rural Sierra Leone, where the rebels come from, people die every day from lack of clean water, from preventable diseases, from malnutrition and no health services.

Whatever the program of this guerrilla movement, there is no doubt that it draws its energy and recruits from the dire need of the people for social change. And whatever excuses the British military gives for being there, there is no doubt that its mission is to preserve the status quo that existed before the rebellion started.

Zimbabwe is a much bigger country, but it too is in a struggle with its former colonial master. There are several issues. One is the land. White farmers still hold 70 percent of the best farmland in Zimbabwe. The government wants to let African people farm this land, especially those who fought for independence but have little to show for it. The white farmers are demanding compensation before they'll leave.

President Robert Mugabe says Britain should pay them compensation, since it was Britain that seized the land from Africans in the first place. Britain tells Zimbabwe it should take out an IMF loan for the money--thus tightening the debt noose around a country that should be rich but has been robbed poor by the colonialists/imperialists.

The U.S. and Britain have been pressuring Mugabe from another direction, too. They want him to bring home troops from the Congo that are helping defend the independent government of Laurent Kabila. Congo has the greatest mineral riches in Africa. The U.S., Belgium, France and Britain fought over it for much of the 20th century. But most of the time they used proxy troops, as when the CIA got Joseph Mobutu to rebel against the Congo's first president, Patrice Lumumba, in the 1960s. In recent years, the U.S. has quietly backed an invasion of eastern Congo by troops from Rwanda and Uganda. Because of that, Zimbabwe, Angola, and other countries went to Kabila's defense.

All this has to be kept in mind when we hear of British "peace keepers" in Sierra Leone, or when U.S. strategists fly to Africa to try and bring "peace" to the Congo by putting pressure on Kabila's African allies to pull out their troops. A new and virulent kind of colonial intervention in Africa is taking shape before our very eyes. The struggle for real independence has become infinitely more difficult since the collapse of the Soviet Union left African governments completely at the mercy of the imperialist world market. The new movement against globalization should support self-determination for African nations and oppose imperialist intervention, no matter how it is disguised.

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