Mugabe wins really dirty:
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who won the country's presidential elections in March but fell short of the majority needed to avert a runoff with Mr. Mugabe, said Sunday that it wasn't worth asking Zimbabweans to risk their lives in the vote, which is scheduled for Friday.Morgan Tsvangirai, speaking at a news conference, said he was pulling out of this week's presidential runoff because of mounting violence and intimidation.
"We will no longer participate in this violent, illegitimate sham of an election process," Mr. Tsvangirai said.
Mr. Mugabe's party, counting the decision as a victory, said Sunday he would assemble a new government that excluded Mr. Tsvangirai once the opposition's withdrawal was official.
The opposition's decision came amid pressure from battered supporters and foreign diplomats, who encouraged it not to participate in a vote that was almost certain to bring more violence and possibly a defeat orchestrated by supporters of the 84-year-old Mr. Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe for 28 years.
The opposition is calling for members of the African Union, regional neighbors or even Western powers to intervene and broker some kind of transitional government that can govern the crumbling nation until free and fair elections can be held. But such a move appears unlikely, given Mr. Mugabe's wariness of foreign powers and African nations' reluctance to act thus far.
There were signs over the weekend of growing international impatience with the Mugabe regime, but it wasn't clear if they would translate into any concrete steps.
Yet Mugabe can travel the world without fear of arrest. As an earlier commenter wrote, when Spain or some other country indicts him for crimes against humanity, only then I will believe indicting foreigners is something other than a pure leftist will to power play.
If Robert Mugabe visits the US?
We will put that S.O.B. in the F-ing ground
once and for all.
I'm not quite as demanding as Chris: if the New York City Council, Ms. McArdle's former elected representatives, refrained from honoring Mugabe, then I'd believe that liberal Democrats care about human rights.
And other African leaders are doing... nothing.
TDE, why should other African leaders do anything to stop Mugabe? They admire him. He stands up to the West (translated: He kicks out and abuses white people without reprisal).
If only there were some international body, some united group of nations, that could deal with situations like these.
He's referring to this:
http://www.thegully.com/essays/US/politics/060403_mugabe_boosters.html
Remind me again why assassination of really, really bad foreign leaders is a bad idea?
Sigh. I don't really believe that would work; it would probably just spark a horrible, violent, bloody civil war. But is that what Zimbabwe will get anyway if Mugabe dies of old age?
This is the only reason regime change as a method is still viable. In this case the opposition took the most responsible action in the preservation of Zimbabwe's people. Mugabe is a thugh, this is one of those times where someone should do something. Sadly nobody will. We're gonna sit in our moral outrage, and even if we had the will the stress on our military at this point makes it a bad decision. All the power in the world, and nobody will stop this, because its Africa and nobody cares.
You'd never believe there were still rogue and failed states in the world led by miserable, thuggish despots based on all the obsessive attention to anything that could conceivably or inconceivably be blamed on the Bush administration.
How many African countries does McMegan cover in her blog? Why does Mugabe get so much attention? How many blog posts has McMegan devoted to Niger, Chad, Congo, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, etc. All these countries I have mentioned have had some crazy stuff happened in their countries recently and has really impacted their citizens to varying degrees. But who cares? I wonder what's so different about Zimbabwe compared to other unstable sub-Saharan African countries.
Slam, I think is may be due to the fact that in the not all that distant past, Zimbabwe, or Rhodesia, was a fairly prosperous, albeit racist, nation.
Ghost of Ian Smith: Toldja.
>> Slam, I think is may be due to the fact that in the not all that distant past, Zimbabwe, or Rhodesia, was a fairly prosperous, albeit racist, nation.
Fairly prosperous for whom? The 5% of it's white population?
Clockwork Orange, I am in no way defending the previous regime, but it is not really in question that even the black population was better off under the loathesome Ian Smith than they are now--Zimbabwe is in really dire, dire straits. That said, they were better off under Zimbabwe prior to its disastrous land reform.
I blog about Zimbabwe because its problems are nearly pure textbook economic problems, and it's a very rare instance of a very prosperous country that has utterly destroyed itself solely through economic policy rather than, say, a civil war.
"Fairly prosperous for whom? The 5% of it's white population?"
Nope. It was very prosperous for its black population too. One of the best places in Africa.
But not any more.
Clockwork, there are a lot of black people in Zimbabwe that would be thrilled to live as black people did in Rhodesia, which of course does not excuse the practices of the Rhodesian government.
they were better off under Zimbabwe prior to its disastrous land reform.
Yes, Mugabe has turned his country from a prosperous net grain exporter to a basket case dependent upon aid in less than a decade. I remember the "reforms" being introduced in roughly 1999-2000, and saying to my wife at the time, "Millions of people are going to starve because of this." It wasn't exactly a hard call to make. Hell, he could have averted most of the starvation by turning the land over to the (black) farm foremen employed by the white landowners, but no, he had to hand it to cronies and ignorant supporters and beat up the black farm employees who knew something about growing food.
If Mugabe had just done nothing, he'd be an unremarkable pseudo-Marxist dictator. As it is, he's proving to be one of our era's worse thugs.
>> Clockwork Orange, I am in no way defending the previous regime
I didn't say you were, I was responding to someone else.
>> but it is not really in question that even the black population was better off under the loathesome Ian Smith than they are now
Oh, blimey, wait, you do defend the previous regime, my bad. You employing the same standard, run of the mill racist/post-colonialist arguments which we heard so many times before - that "they were better off under their white masters, governors or slave owners, etc, etc."
It is rather strange argument - presenting depriving someone of basic rights and lierties (such as voting rights for example) as an essential "good", especially for one with supposedly libertarian leanings like yourself, but colour me unsurprised.
>> it's a very rare instance of a very prosperous country that has utterly destroyed itself
So I am still waiting for the answer - by what standard is a country can be considered "very prosperous", when whites - the "prosperous ones" - comprised less than 5% of the total population, while objectively holding as much as 95% of economic and political power?
Do you not think that perhaps it were these specific conditions that led to raise of someone like "Uncle Bob"?
Is anyone really surprised?
I am more interested in what happens in South Africa...
It is rather strange argument - presenting depriving someone of basic rights and lierties (such as voting rights for example) as an essential "good"
See, the thing is, Mugabe is doing precisely this. So to the extent that you want to argue that Mugabe is better than Smith, you're going to have to find some other grounds than "Smith violated human rights." For my part, I don't regard starvation and violent oppression as being better when coming from a black dictator than from a white one.
Besides, which, 15 years ago "Uncle Bob" had been in power for 13 years or so, but without destroying the economy or allowing widespread starvation. So it doesn't seem farfetched to me to think that what he's doing now is somehow in error.
No, I'm not defending it; I'm making the empirical point that living standards were higher for Zimbabwean blacks under Smith than they are now. Nor do they have meaningfully more political freedom than they did then.
Smith remains a loathesome racist (well, until he died, anyway), and Rhodesia's foul former regime a gruesome relic of colonialism. Blacks were indisputably much better off under Mugabe prior to 2000, and would still be if he had attempted a halfway sensible land reform and allowed free elections. Neither the racist Rhodesian regime nor the current disaster are necessary.
>> Clockwork, there are a lot of black people in Zimbabwe that would be thrilled to live as black people did in Rhodesia, which of course does not excuse the practices of the Rhodesian government.
Is this sort of like "if you gonna get raped you might as well lie back and enjoy it" line of argument? With standard disclaimer that we do not excuse or condone rape, of course?
It's always fun to watch affluent (mostly white) people on the intrawebz pretending to know how African people (or Iraqi people, or "whoever it is we are bombing right now people") feel, or how they should behave. Stuff white people like, indeed.
Rob >> So to the extent that you want to argue that Mugabe is better than Smith
Where did I argue that?
CO, given that Mugabe is a racist thug who uses starvation as a weapon against his political enemies, why do you seem to think he's better than Ian Smith?
It's always fun to watch affluent (mostly white) people on the intrawebz pretending to know how African people (or Iraqi people, or "whoever it is we are bombing right now people") feel, or how they should behave. Stuff white people like, indeed.
Assuming, for the sake of the argument, that all of this is true without qualification. The whites are ignorant blog commentz0rz, yadda yadda. Just one question:
What has your superior knowledge contributed toward our collective better understanding of what is happening in Zimbabwe, either in this thread, or elsewhere recently?
"Things are worse there today than they were yesterday, and they were worse yesterday than the day before."
"Why are you defending Smith?"
That's how this is coming across, CO.
MM>> No, I'm not defending it; I'm making the empirical point that living standards were higher for Zimbabwean blacks under Smith than they are now.
Yes you are. People cannot have any meaningful measure of "living standard" if they cannot control their own destiny. Being a second class citizen, without any basic rights, basically equivalent to a herd of cattle and just a tiny bit short of slavery or serfdom, ain't no living standard.
Where did I argue that?
Well, you appear to be disagreeing with people who said that life under Smith was better than it is today, under Mugabe. That disagreement would seem to founded on a belief that Mugabe is better than Smith. Since you're now apparently disavowing that position, we're left wondering what your point is.
So, stake out a position. Under which dictator (and why) was life for blacks better: Smith or Mugabe? We'll go on from there.
I'm not so sure that Mugabe is a racist. I think racism, for him, is merely a convenient tool to help hold onto power. Which seems to be what he really cares about.
And the fact that Smith's regime in Rhodesia was loathsome does not automatically mean that anything else is necessarily better. Mugabe seems to be demonstrating that to anyone with eyes to see.
What really bothers me is that Mbeki in South Africa refuses to do anything. Other leaders in Southern Africa may be losing patience with Mugabe, but Mbeki is the only one who actually has enough clout that he might be able to do something effective. Sadly, he seems to be unable to bring himself to even criticize Mugabe, much less actually do something.
Being a second class citizen, without any basic rights, basically equivalent to a herd of cattle and just a tiny bit short of slavery or serfdom, ain't no living standard.\
Right, so, since that's how Mugabe treats people, you must really dislike the guy, right?
>> The whites are ignorant blog commentz0rz, yadda yadda
Nothing could be further from the true. And if you weren't one of the very small minority (not necessarily white either ) of said ignorant fools, you would understand that my comment was directed specifically at the segment of blogosphere which has very little real life experience with things like racism (the real kind - when you banned from entering a restaurant, not the kind where someone calls you a "whitey"), colonialism, ethnic violence, poverty (the real kind - where you have nothing to eat but bread crumbs for several days, not the kind when you are "forced" to sell your second holiday home due to sub-prime collapse). Yet that same segment is the most vocal in advising other people on how they should conduct their affairs.
>> What has your superior knowledge contributed toward our collective better understanding of what is happening in Zimbabwe, either in this thread, or elsewhere recently?
I have not claimed such knowledge. Lot of people here though seem to think that Zimbabweans were "better off" under old regime. I wonder where does their superior knowledge in this area comes from.
Well, Clockwork, I nevr made an argument as to how African people whould behave, so you can do away with that bit of dishonesty, please? Or do you normally think that dishonest rhetoric serves your purposes. As to how some Africans feel, I've actually tried to live on a 100 to 400 calorie per day diet involuntarily for an extended period of time. It was my experience that I would have been thrilled to have an opportunity to consume more calories, even if they came with an oppressive government which treated me horribly due to the color of my skin, especially if no other relief was in sight. Starvation is funny that way; you should try it as a means of enlightenment, if you've never been so blessed.
RL >> So, stake out a position. Under which dictator (and why) was life for blacks better: Smith or Mugabe? We'll go on from there.
Smith was not a dictator, he was democratically (well sans black vote ofc) elected Prime Minister. If you want to discuss a subject perhaps you should learn a little bit about it first?
Secondly, what is this morbid fascination with my own personal views on Mugabe? I mean, seriously, do you think the lives of Zimbabweans will magically improve if I denounce Mugabe as a vile tin-pot dictator that he is?
The life of blacks in POST-Smith (i.e. post colonialist, post white-rule period) could have been infinitely better than it was under white minority rule - regardless of Mugabe's antics. They f*cked it up, but it was their choice to do so. It's a choice they did not have before.
Secondly, what is this morbid fascination with my own personal views on Mugabe?
Because I'm trying to figure out what the hell your point is. Our gracious hostess says life was better under Smith. You disagree with her somehow, but many posts later, you haven't managed to explain what she has wrong. Mugabe disfranchises blacks just as surely as did Smith, so elections can't be the issue. Mugabe arrests and brutalizes his opponents, so that can't be what's better today. Mugabe starves his country, so that probably isn't a point in his favor.
Hence, the question: what, precisely, are you arguing here? Is life better or worse today? Is it better on some metrics and worse on others? Which ones?
>> Starvation is funny that way; you should try it as a means of enlightenment, if you've never been so blessed.
I was born and grew up in former USSR, so don't tell me about lack of food and basic necessities, please for god's sake. Moreover, I actually live in South Africa, so I see people who live on absolute bare minimum every day. This is precisely what I am talking about: you think your own experiences however drastic they may be, are the unique measurement from which all mankind should derive it's wisdom. Spare me.
>> It was my experience that I would have been thrilled to have an opportunity to consume more calories, even if they came with an oppressive government which treated me horribly due to the color of my skin, especially if no other relief was in sight.
Strangely enough my experience with somewhat harsh realities of life brings out quite the opposite emotions. To each his own I guess.
"It's a choice they did not have before."
CO, looking at the setup now, I kinda want to say that it's a choice that they don't have now either. "But they chose to not have a choice!" doesn't really move me that much.
Well, Clockwork, I spent time in the USSR, and saw many, many, people who were in no danger of starvation, so, no, I have no basis with which to think that you have ever experienced it, for god's sake. Having experienced starvation, it is my impression that in it's most severe depths that all human taboos and inhibitions, or what people find intolerable, tend to disappear, so overwhelming is the desire to simply eat. This is where we get stories, for instance, of a kulak father and mother eating their child's corpse. I do not wish to reflect upon on what I was willing to tolerate when I was extremely calorically deprived. Thus, a government which is willing to deliberately pursues policies which starves people is quite likely to result in substantial numbers of people which would be thrilled to consume more calories, even if those extra calories came with other considerable horrors.
Got it?
THIS is where outrage is useful.
So what do we do about it, besides be outraged?
You are all arguing over a dead country (Rhodesia) and who was better off Rhodesia under the colonialists. Or Zimbabwe under the thugs. This is sheer nonsense in lieu of whats happening. If you want to compare and contrast Rhodesia and Zimbabwe by all means fund the study, survey the people, write the book, I'll buy a copy. Personally though I was hoping by coming back to this thread that somebody would offer a piece of knowledge I didn't know. Something that would allow this farse a quick burial and Mugabe a quicker oust. However, I end up with a history lesson, but this isn't a history blog. Or perhaps you would like to argue how Ian Smith was bigot, but he wasn't as bad a bigot as ______.
You are all arguing over a dead country (Rhodesia) and who was better off Rhodesia under the colonialists. Or Zimbabwe under the thugs. This is sheer nonsense in lieu of whats happening. If you want to compare and contrast Rhodesia and Zimbabwe by all means fund the study, survey the people, write the book, I'll buy a copy. Personally though I was hoping by coming back to this thread that somebody would offer a piece of knowledge I didn't know. Something that would allow this farse a quick burial and Mugabe a quicker oust. However, I end up with a history lesson, but this isn't a history blog. Or perhaps you would like to argue how Ian Smith was a bigot, but he wasn't as bad a bigot as ______.
>> Is life better or worse today?
This is a question based on pure utilitarianism, and it lacks historical perspective (just like Megan's opinion does), and as such meaningless. If Tsvangirai won the election today and brought instant peace and democracy to the country, but tomorrow Zim were hit by really bad drought and people started dying in droves from hunger - would you say that Mugabe was better than Tsangvirai, because people were better off under Mugabe?
Of course not. You would, naturally, say that it was Mugabe's idiotic policies that led to general poverty and deterioration of services, and drought just added to the already widespread misery. Well same applies to Smith and white minority rule of Rodesia. It was their policies that led to formation of miscellaneous liberation fronts such as ZANU-PF and their ilk. It was their policies that directly led to people like Mugabe eventually taking over and flushing the country down the toilet. It was their policies that kept the 95% of population oppressed and marginalized (yes Russian Revolution, clearly didn't teach anyone anything).
Mugabe is just a consequence, yet another clown figure in the long line of post-colonial african tin-pot tyrants. One would think that white Europeans in Africa (and elsewhere) would actually wise up and learn from the experience. But this as this board clearly shows the "they were better off slaving for the white masters" line of thinking is unfortunately still very much alive.
Well good luck with that.
Well, ben and Christina, I'll break the news to you. Nothing is going to be done about this outrage, because it would take a substantial amount of political capital to really do something effective, nobody's election outside of Africa hinges on what happens in Zimbabwe.
"This is a question based on pure utilitarianism"
Do we want to bust out Deontology? Deontologically, are they getting better than they were or are they getting worse? If they are getting worse, are they getting worse in the "it has to get worse before it gets better" or in the "it's just getting worse" sense?
Or is it just a case where people from different cultures have no right to judge Mugabe, unless they're saying that his actions are perfectly understandable given the racist circumstances forced upon him in childhood?
. It was their policies that directly led to people like Mugabe eventually taking over and flushing the country down the toilet.
Really? Smith told Mugabe to run a net grain surplus for about 20 years and then destroy it to starve his opponents?
Mugabe is just a consequence...
No, he's a person and a moral agent who is responsible for his own actions. You can argue that, as a practical matter, running a racist or oppressive government has bad effects, but you can't act like Mugabe lacks free will and is somehow compelled by historical racism to be a murderous thug. You can't lay his actions at the feet of Europeans; he decided them for himself.
You're just evading the question in any case.
>> Our gracious hostess says life was better under Smith. You disagree with her somehow, but many posts later, you haven't managed to explain what she has wrong.
Yes I disagree on several levels and with several different posters, try to keep up. First objection was to statement that Zim was "prosperous", when I pointed out that "prosperous" referred to
Hence all the posturing and white superiority complex is quite lame, imo.
I think the use of the term "white superiority complex" is quite lame, too, but let it slide.
Your position is that we don't know if life was "better" 30 years ago or not. OK, that's a fair position, and I don't have an answer. Perhaps someone else does.
The Limits Of Human Knowledge?
Is that what this is about? It's not about saying X (or not X), merely that we don't know enough to say X, how dare we, racism!, we should have enough humility to not say things such as X, and so on?
This allows you to argue with us for saying X, without you having to argue not X.
Out of curiosity, let's say that we use a handful of things that make us think X. Food, for one. Inflation, for another. Stability (ah, stability), for yet another.
I'm completely and totally cool with hearing why we shouldn't think Food, Inflation, or Stability are good measuring sticks.
But I am wondering what stick we should use instead of it (and why would be cool, but I can see how that might be a tall order, so I'd be fine with just what).
Will-
Yeah, I know thats why I said ealier in this thread nobody will do anything. I am just saddened that since nothing can be done this is turning into: "It was crappier with the white bigots in charge, no, its crappier with the black thugs." To say it was ever a real winner is debatable. Even at the height of Rhodesia's power, it suffered from its own special apartheid.
Clockwork, your're the one that characterized blacks in Rhodesia as slaves. It is unusual for slaves to be deliberartely starved, since the slavemaster does not profit from a slave who is starved. No, life is not simply about food, but then I never claimed otherwise. I claimed that people who are starving are thrilled to get more calories, even if those calories come with other horrors. You seem to have trouble grasping this point, without adding other assertions that you wish to argue about which I have not addressed.
My god I was hoping for some intelligent debate ...
Rob>> Really? Smith told Mugabe to run a net grain surplus for about 20 years and then destroy it to starve his opponents?
Your obsession with a singular figure of Mugabe is really pathetic. Just like the pro-Iraq-war cheerleaders grasped onto Saddam like a little personality cult of their own. The inability to actually look deeper into the source of conflict and acquire some historical perspective is staggering.
That net grain surplus that you are talking about was gained using near slave and extremely cheap labour provided by 95% of Zim's population, which in turn owned very little or nothing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whites_in_Zimbabwe
"The white farm was typically a large (>100 km²) mechanised estate, owned by a white family and employing hundreds of blacks." and "At the time of independence in 1980, over 40% of the country's farming land was contained within 5,000 white farms."
5000 white families out of total population of about 6 million (i.e. less than 0.1%) owned nearly half the country's land.
So, sure, they had grain surplus. Who wouldn't? Give me 10 guys who would work whole day for peanuts, I will start exporting grain from my tiny garden in no time.
The simple truth is that this gravy (grain :) train could only continue as long as white minority maintained it's grip on power and owned pretty much all of the land. Now if you are content with maintaining this status quo - i.e. classic European colonial rule, extracting enormous wealth from subjugation of indigenous population and cheap labor, while maintaining racist and segregation policies - by all means say so, and let's close the debate.
But once you admit that such rule is inconsistent with basic human rights and dignity, you will have to allow for the idea that this economic model is not sustainable in the long run. Then you give people the vote, and suddenly those uppity africans want to drink water from the same fountain and demand better wages. Oh the horror. There goes my grain surplus.
There's a lotta stuff that's inconsistent with basic human rights and dignity, Clockwork.
Some more than others.
on June 23, 2008 2:57 PM
meant to say:
Yes I disagree on several levels and with several different posters, try to keep up. First objection was to statement that Zim was "prosperous", when I pointed out that "prosperous" referred to less than 5 pct of population
something ate part of the post
Clockwork, before snarking about the lack of intelligent debate, endeavor to demonstrate that you are literate enought to read the thread, will you? As was noted above, a net grain surplus was most certainly not dependent on the white minority maintaining it's grip on power. That you seem to think that a net grain surplus cannot be achieved if Africans vote indicates that you are far more racist than anyone else in this thread.
>> I think the use of the term "white superiority complex" is quite lame, too, but let it slide.
Dude. Seriously. I am whiter than the shade of pale and live in country where I am a rather small minority among black people. I can assure you that the white superiority complex is very very real, at least in this country.
The whole "we build this country and those uppity ni**ers are taking it away from us is getting tiring after a while. Believe me.
My god I was hoping for some intelligent debate
Then perhaps you should drop the smugness, repeated accusations of racism, and opaque writing.
Your obsession with a singular figure of Mugabe is really pathetic.
Well, he is the dictator who is responsible for a land "reform" that took land away from people who could produce enough for everyone to eat and gave it to people who apparently don't know jack about farming. And the guy who manipulates food aid sent from abroad, and the guy who stuffs ballot boxes, intimidates opponents and their voters, etc. So I think he may be a somewhat important figure in this discussion.
So, sure, they had grain surplus. Who wouldn't? Give me 10 guys who would work whole day for peanuts, I will start exporting grain from my tiny garden in no time...Then you give people the vote, and suddenly those uppity africans want to drink water from the same fountain and demand better wages. Oh the horror. There goes my grain surplus.
See, the point about the grain surplus is not that the workers were paid wonderful wages, or the economic system was wonderfully sustainable and fair, or anything like that. The point was, people had enough to eat. They weren't starving. They are starving now.
This is not a difficult point to grasp.
Yes, Clockwork, you demonstrated your lack of reading comprehensioon by taking issue with the description of Rhodesia as prosperous, while ignoring the additional adjective of "racist" which certainly implies that the prosperity was unfairly distributed. My god I was hoping to have a dialogue with someone who could read.
The whole "we build this country and those uppity ni**ers are taking it away from us is getting tiring after a while. Believe me
Yes, well, that's nice. Not sure why you feel the need to apply it to people here, though. Perhaps you're allowing your personal experiences to leach into your opinions, like Will Allen.
RL >> repeated accusations of racism
Because at it's heart, the idea that people subjected to various sorts of racial discrimination (or exploitation) are somehow better off, than if they were free - is in fact racist. It presumes that the people in question lack mental and physical capacity to determine their own fate. I.e. they are presumed "children", and only the white Man can teach them how to do things. Maybe. When he finishes his round of golf.
This idea comes back over and over again, I have seen it expressed on many a-conservative and libertarian blogs (the sentiment that blacks should be grateful for being brought to the US as slaves for example, is very much alive these days in places like FreeRepublic), it just keeps coming back like bad hangover. And I am tired of this BS.
Not a single person on this thread (except me I think) mentioned the opposition leader - Morgan Tsangvirai. No one asked questions - what were his possible ideas for Zimbabwe, could he be a leader that the country desperately needs, or perhaps he is just another tin-pot dictator in the making. No one is interested in discussing the future. Not with another black leader on the horizon anyway.
The vast majority of posters immediately (and predictably) started to reminisce about how much better it was for blacks during colonial rule (of course with usual caveats: "not like we condone it or anything! we swear!! prosperity!!! surplus!!!!").
Well, that's plain racism, afaic. If you lie with fleas ...
Clockwork, you were the only person who implied in this thread that a grain surplus was incompatible with Africans voting.
Nothing could be further from the true. And if you weren't one of the very small minority (not necessarily white either ) of said ignorant fools
See, this is the kind of thing that convinced others that you are not a serious agent in this discussion, but instead merely prefer to hate on people. You know neither my race nor the depths of my ignorance, nor in fact any of my specific opinions on the preset state of Zimbabwe, yet consider yourself a competent and acrid judge of all of them.
I have not claimed such knowledge.
You don't have to claim it explicitly, your condescending tone and frequent lectures on other's ignorance are the calling card of someone who is either vastly more informed on the topic than his interlocutors (but isn't bothering to share any of this vast storehouse as evidence), or has something of superiority complex, or possibly a mixture of both.
Lot of people here though seem to think that Zimbabweans were "better off" under old regime. I wonder where does their superior knowledge in this area comes from.
It was a reasonable interpretation based upon the availability of food before and after the fact in question. Any society may have any number of successes and failures, but basic food availability is a fairly objective bellwether of which way the root fundamentals have gone.
So far, all of your objections to that claim seem to be premised in some sort of desire to be nasty to people. I hope it's doing something beneficial for you, because it ain't doing the trick for me, and has pretty much killed my desire to try and learn anything from your experiences.
Because at it's heart, the idea that people subjected to various sorts of racial discrimination (or exploitation) are somehow better off, than if they were free - is in fact racist.
Well, all other things being equal, certainly that's true. But nobody here argued that; some people said that despite discrimination and exploidation, life was still better in Rhodesia.
Purely hypothetically, given a choice between material comfort under apartheid and starvation and/or death in "freedom," there are an awful lot of people who would pick the former, and thus could be said to be "better off" under those circumstances. Certainly I don't think that everyone, everywhere, regards racial oppression as the single worst thing that can ever possibly happen to a human being.
All the other nonsense about being children or rounds of golf is your own baggage that you're bringing to the table.
CO,
No one is brining up Tsangvirai because he is somewhat beside the point, as Mugabe isn't giving up power and will continue his reign of terror and oppression. Whether Tsangvirai is Mugabe Jr. or George Washington is irrelevant, as he will have as much an impact on Zim society as I will.
Had Mugabe removed the white landowners and given the land to COMPETENT black farmers, installed a transition plan to have the white landowners teach the new owners how to farm or done anything but the insane reforms he did, we wouldn't be here today.
Had Mugabe stepped down after losing the election, regardless of any quality of Tsangvirai, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Had Mugabe not pursued economic policies that led to Weimar like inflation, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Had Mugabe not demolished his citizens (opposition) housing and forced millions of his citizens into homelessness, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
To say that Mugabe is a killer, thug, racist, despot does not excuse others. To say he has made Zimbabwe a worse place to live than it was in 1998 is not controversial. To say he has done so in spectacular fashion is not controversial. To say his "land reforms" are a cause of that is not to imply that black Africans can't farm, it is to say that the "land reforms" were a disastrous idea that had no chance of succeeding due to their basic nature, that of replacing competent farmers with incompetent farmers.
The consequences of that move fall squarely on Mugabe, to imply otherwise is to deny him the agency he so clearly has, and to infantilize him. He deserves scorn and contempt, not pity.
"The simple truth is that this gravy (grain :) train could only continue as long as white minority maintained it's grip on power and owned pretty much all of the land."
What an incredibly, disgustingly racist claim! You think that black people are incapable of feeding themselves? The starvation in Zimbabwe is caused directly by Mugabe's policies, not by the inability of blacks. Skullberg in the post above already explained it quite well -
"Had Mugabe removed the white landowners and given the land to COMPETENT black farmers, installed a transition plan to have the white landowners teach the new owners how to farm or done anything but the insane reforms he did, we wouldn't be here today."
But I'll try giving you the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps you were just confused between production and profit. How much the owner pays workers affects the net profit left over after paying them, and that might have been lower after reasonable (as opposed to Mugabe-style) land reforms. But there's no reason at all why production needed to be lower, simply because the land was owned by blacks rather than whites. The fall in the level of output was from getting rid of people that knew what they were doing, and then doing stupid things.
As our glorious hostess said previously:
1.I think that speaking of one culture as "better" than another is a meaningless statement.
2. I think almost no one adequately appreciates how much heavy lifting hidden cultural norms do in our political and economic systems..
Per your humble servant:
Then on any given blogpost we could see which one wins.
TIME FOR A SHIFT IN ATTITUDE AND APPROACH TO SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2008/06/resuscitation-of-sub-saharan-africa.html
The history of aid has been dismal, and resource exploitation has cursed the population.
ClockworkOrange: And I don't mean just food, Will Allen, life is not just about food (although granted it is a basic necessity).
I'm not an expert or anything, but I think that when food is scarce, life is all about getting enough of it.
Again, comrade Clockwork: So I am still waiting for the answer - by what standard is a country can be considered "very prosperous", when whites - the "prosperous ones" - comprised less than 5% of the total population, while objectively holding as much as 95% of economic and political power?
Wait no more: In the past, people did not use to starve, or brave the jungles to flee their homeland in the hope of finding food in neighboring lands. Apparently they were able to feed themselves without being Zanu-PF party members. To my mind, that's better life that what Zimbabweans enjoy today. That's nothing to do with the president's skin color. Even under Mugabe, for a while, non-party members were able to feed themselves AND their families!
I don't mean to belittle what you assured us is your vast experience with hunger, which apparently taught you that people don't mind dying of hunger all that much, as long as they are being deprived by people of the same race.
I think that a lot of you are conflating Rhodesia-as-was with South Africa. As I understand it, the franchise in Rhodesia was open to anyone---black or white---who met certain criteria (a minimal amount of education and literacy, and maybe other things, but the bar wasn't too high). There was never apartheid in Rhodesia, and a big percentage of the Rhodesian army was blacks.
Given African realities, Rhodesia was about as good as it could get. Yes, the whites probably did have special privileges, de facto even if not strictly de jure. I don't know of any black-run African country that didn't have special privileges for the ruling tribe(s).
"Smith was not a dictator, he was democratically (well sans black vote ofc) elected Prime Minister. "
Well, that lets Hitler off the hook, I guess.
"I was born and grew up in former USSR, so don't tell me about lack of food and basic necessities, please for god's sake. Moreover, I actually live in South Africa,.."
You're lying. No adult Russian-speaker I have ever come across writes like you do. Your diction and style are clearly British and you POV is clearly British university student fashionably leftist Third Worldist boilerplate. A person might conceivably be raised in so insular an environment in a place like Russia as to develop native fluency in English, but would have to be kept completely insulated from Russian to have so pure an ethnic style as you do. Come to think of it, that's the kind of isolation it would take to develop so naive a worldview as you have, which might give your assertion a little support. But not enough to make it any less laughable.
"1.I think that speaking of one culture as "better" than another is a meaningless statement."
Well, unless we define "better", any such statement is meaningless. But some cultures clearly lead to better outcomes than others, once we define our objectives. Others can question our objectives, and come up with different rankings based on different sets of objectives. Still, for any one set of goals, some cultures deliver superior outcomes and in that sense are 'better'.
In many cases, cultures evolved to fit one set of circumstances, and that same culture may later prevent or drastically delay progress as circumstances change. It's entirely possible to get stuck in a suboptimal equilibrium, and thus it's better to realistically evaluate cultures and try to find ways to adjust them to changing conditions, rather than to throw up our hands and say that there must have been some reason why they developed originally, so we shouldn't question them. There was a reason why people had so many candles back before electric lights, but that doesn't mean that candlelight is superior in most cases today.
Jim - Re "Well, that lets Hitler off the hook, I guess."
Hitler was appointed as chancellor, not elected. His party was a major party by the time he was appointed, but it never achieved a majority until it outlawed other parties.
Which is not to say that Smith's election was highly democratic, considering the official discrimination blacks in Rhodesia faced. They where not categorically banned from voting, but system was racist, and the "category A" and category B" system gave more power to those who with high income or extensive education (in practice mostly white), so it was racist and undemocratic.
I'll take up the gauntlet.
Zimbabwe at present would be a better place to live if it were still Rhodesia and restricted the franchise to the land owning class.
The reality of the situation is that the average IQ in sub-Saharan Africa is 75. If given voting rights, Africans elect tribalist thugs who pillage the country for the benefit of their fellow tribesmen. The opposition leader is just a front for some other tribe that would like to do exactly the same.
Colonialist governments produced countries that had lower crime, more food and productive infrastructure. Post colonialist governments do none of those things but the people ruling have the same skin color as the majority of the population. You have to put an awfully large weight on the "ruled by people of the same color" variable to claim that post-colonial government in Africa is anything but worse by a large margin than the colonial governments.
"Hitler was appointed as chancellor, not elected."
He was appointed only after having done well in the election, both him and his party. There were no direct elections for the position of Chancellor. Are you trying say that he was installed by some shadowy cabal of plutocrats, or that he tok power by force? He came to power as democratically as was possible at the time. The point is that being democratically elected does not at all immunize someone from either being or becoming a dictator.
The question of being better off or worse off in today's Zimbabwe in comparison to Rhodesia should extend beyond the question of jobs and wages. There should also be a consideration of access to education and health care. Clearly the circumstances for those in search of health care today are far worse than they were before 1998 and are probably worse than they were in 1980. The hyperinflation has helped to drive away the trained professionals and made it very difficult to obtain technology and supplies. The educational system by all accounts has fallen apart as trained teachers have to find other sources of income to support their families.
One observation that has been made about the commercial farming sector that existed in 1998 is that a large number of the farms,perhaps a majority, had been purchased in open market sales after 1980,with most of those purchasers being South African Afrikaaners with skill sets in search of affordable farm land. The Zimbabwean tragedy is that those skill sets were lost to the country at a time when there is great need for expanded agricultural production. Zimbabwe used to generate substantial hard currency earnings through sales of sugar, tobacco, and grain, both in the southern African environment. All of that has now been lost. The best and the brightest have fled.
Jim - No I'm not saying Hitler was "installed by some shadowy cabal of plutocrats", only that he wasn't elected.
And he didn't come in to his full power "as democratically as possible". As soon as he started to get some real power he had other political parties banned and basically subverted the democratic process in Germany.
re: - "The point is that being democratically elected does not at all immunize someone from either being or becoming a dictator."
If your democratically elected, you don't have near absolute power, and your subject to being democratically pushed out of office, and the elections aren't total shams, than I would say you aren't a dictator.