LETTERS - Zimbabwe
Stop blaming the West for Zim crisisBy AC, Lusaka
Friday September 28, 2007 [04:00]
I was in Zimbabwe a few weeks ago just after the SADC summit and had the chance to experience the desperation in that country. You get the impression that the Zimbabweans feel betrayed by their African brothers for supporting Mugabe because we are benefiting from Zimbabwe’s woes.
I strongly feel we should avoid expressing all sorts of emotive armchair views when it is others who are paying the price and making the sacrifices. The crisis in Zimbabwe is serious and now is not the time for politics with the West. The guys that side have nothing to lose.
Whilst we appreciate the noble causes, I believe that we should be realistic enough to know that this is not a perfect world and we should learn to survive whilst we fight for these noble causes. It is extremely foolish to think that you can only do business with those you like. How many of us love our bosses or the so-called investors? Pure hypocrisy I can smell.
Let us put our hatred for the Westerners aside and learn to apportion some of the blame to ourselves because that’s the only way you can deal with a problem, by acknowledging it. Let us blame ourselves for not having a strategy other than direct confrontation to deal with the West and let us blame Mugabe for starting a fight he could not finish.
Let us blame ourselves for believing Mugabe’s cheap propaganda and finally let us not satisfy our unhealthy appetite for revenge by sacrificing the lives of the Zimbabwean people. The fact that Mugabe has stood up against the ‘evil’ West does not make him a good man.
http://www.postzambia.com/post-read_article.php?articleId=32006
Trivialising Zimbabwe situation
By Fr. Derrick Muwina
Friday September 28, 2007 [04:00]
The era of socialist cheap talk about Europe and America out to get Africa is misleading and deliberately contrived to quell any opposition to kleptomaniac leadership in Africa.
Zimbabwe is a serious case and Africans should not be cheated by cheap talk about standing against the West. What is happening in Zimbabwe is abuse of human rights, deliberate vandalism of a country and outright chaos. People live in fear and do not have the kind of freedom to talk openly against the government. The question is how many Zambians would want Mwanawasa to act like Mugabe?
How many Zambians would love to go and stay in Zimbabwe? How many Zambians would love Mwanawasa to beat up any person who opposes him? In fact, in Zambia a large section of the population are concerned with the seeming shifty position of the Mwanawasa government over the Constitution.
I find it insulting to the Zimbabwean people and very immature for anybody to suggest that what is happening in Zimbabwe is simply standing against the West and African presidents should stand behind Mugabe.
The failure of African economies is attributed directly though not simply to failure in African leadership. A country with over three million of its people in exile is a serious case. Things may seem okay for now but economic decline shows years later.
African leaders are supposed to criticise each other and seriously question the way states are governed. Africans should go beyond old school rhetoric which has bred dictators and kept them in power. We cannot deny foreign intrusion, but that should not be the reason for any African leader to abuse his/her people and run down a country as is happening in Zimbabwe.
posted by MrK @ 6:00 PM
1 Comments:
Let us put our hatred for the Westerners aside and learn to apportion some of the blame to ourselves because that’s the only way you can deal with a problem, by acknowledging it.
That would be a much more convincing argument, if the western media wasn't filled with an undiscriminating cabal against president Mugabe. You would think he was personally holding back the clouds and causing a drought in Zimbabwe only.
It would be a much more convincing argument, if the MDC weren't as cowardly, and admitted that Zimbabwe is under sanctions, instead of pretending there are no sanctions on Zimbabwe, 'only light travel restrictions'. Cowardice. The MDC know very well that if the extent of sanctions against Zimbabwe is known, the people of Zimbabwe would hold them accountable. Instead, they call for more sanctions at the same time.
The fact that Mugabe has stood up against the ‘evil’ West does not make him a good man.
Too bad the writer does not at all address the issue of Morgan Tsvangirai. This 'self-taught son of a brick layer' has offered no independent economic policy of his own - and yet he wants to be in power. For what - so sanctions can be lifted, and the Zimbabwean state can be sold off for cents on the dollar, like Chiluba did in Zambia.
LonRho did not create LonZim, their 50 million pound fund, out of charity, or even because they wanted to take a bet on direction of the Zimbabwean economy. They are waiting in the wings to buy up the Zimbabwean state for nothing - just as the Zambian mines were sold - for nothing. That is their 50 million pound bet.
But that is not the worst that is awaiting the people of Zimbabwe.
If the MDC make good on their promise to return all land to the white farmers, there will be a civil war. Will these western farmers/MDC use the Ndebele to beat up on the Shona, the way colonialists always set the minority against the majority? Will the 250,000 people who have been resettled give up their land peacefully? Or will the police and army be used to evict them?
This is not 'cheap socialist rhetoric', it is looking ahead, and taking the MDC on their word, when they say they want to turn back land reform in Zimbabwe. Or when they say that they think the Zambian model of privatisation is something to be admired and followed.
Lastly, neither of the writers address why the Zimbabwean economy is in such a bad state. Neither of them (of course) mention ZDERA.
If the MDC take over, the present problems in Zimbabwe will look like a walk in the park.
The only solution is to abolish all sanctions on Zimbabwe, and wait for the younger generation of leadership that will inevitable rise to the top in the ZANU-PF.
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