In 1980, after white minority rule was ended in Rhodesia, Robert Mugabe, like Nelson Mandela in South Africa, pledged to work for conciliation and racial harmony. Unlike Mandela, however, mere weeks after gaining political power, he unleashed a military campaign to destroy his rival revolutionary parties in Matabeleland and create a one party state. Up to 20 000 civilians were killed in the fighting. In 2003, he declared that in order to crush the opposition he would become a “black Hitler” if necessary, “If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold. That is what we stand for,” he said.
Mugabe is not a politician who gradually succumbed to megalomania and turned into a petulant dictator. His authoritarian bent was on display at (his political) birth. He has allowed the country, once the breadbasket of the continent, to descend into a bankrupt state, threatened with catastrophic food shortages and economic collapse, all for the sake of holding onto power. He treats Zimbabwe as his personal fiefdom, granting land and favors to cronies, and surrounding himself with sycophantic ministers, fiddling while Zimbabwe burns.
African leaders of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), led by South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, have been loathe to condemn him outright, in a misguided display of solidarity with a fellow former revolutionary. But even if they were to suddenly grow a pair, recognize that their loyalty is misplaced, and demand that he step down, it would matter not one whit to Mugabe. “No matter what force you have, this is my territory and that which is mine I cling [to] unto death,” he said in 2001.
He has the ZANU-PF machinery in place, backed by the military and the police, and he can still rely on youth groups, veterans and party militias. He has relied on violence for thirty years to maintain and consolidate power, even boasting of having a “degree in violence”.
Robert Mugabe will not go gently into that good night. No, to paraphrase Charlton Heston’s rallying call to the NRA, they will have to pry Zimbabwe from his cold dead hands.
Filed under: Politics, World Events | Tagged: Africa, Power, Revolution, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe
china has called home the ship
spread the word
http://propagandapress.org/2008/04/24/an-yue-jiang-called-home-by-chinese-government/
[...] To Take Out The Trash Posted on December 8, 2008 by seniledelinquent In April 2008 I wrote that they would have to pry Zimbabwe from Robert Mugabe’s cold dead hands. At that [...]
Robert Mugabe goes on a state visit to Israel. While he is on a tour of Jerusalem he suffers a heart attack and passes away.
The undertaker tells the accompanying people, “you can have him shipped home for USS500,000 or you can bury him here, in the Holy Land , for just USS100?”
The Zimbabweans go into a corner and discuss for a minute. They come back to the undertaker and tell him they want Mugabe shipped home.
The undertaker is puzzled and asks, “Why would you spend $500 000 to ship him home, when it would be wonderful to be buried here and you would spend only $100? With the money you save you could buy enough diesel for a year, buy enough medicines to wipe out cholera, buy enough generators to never have blackouts again.”
The Zimbabweans replied, “Long ago a man died here, was buried here, and three days later he rose from the dead. We just can’t take that chance!”