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(ASSAULTONBLACKSANITY) Zimbabwe's White MDC Leader Lets The Cat Out Of The Bag

The Assault On Black Folk
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Zimbabwe's White MDC Leader Lets The Cat Out Of The Bag

In trying to make a case for Robert Mugabe's swift abdication from power, Eddie Cross a member of the white Rhodesian settler colony, now a citizen of Zimbabwe, founding member of Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and economic czar of that organization, had some pretty revealing things to say on his website this week. Some of the juicier excerpts follow:

"In 1973 I was part of a small group of exceptional young business executives who were all also serving in one capacity or another in the Rhodesian security forces. We were all under 30 years of age, rapidly rising through the ranks in business and all born Rhodesians. We were a patriotic bunch drawn from every possible profession.

We agreed to put our heads together and project different possible outcomes for the war that was then in the second year of real conflict. After a month of work we thought we had it pretty well sewn up - all our predictions were for defeat in the long run and the different ways to get the best deal out of the process of seeking a solution. We drafted a memorandum and sent it to the Prime Minister with a letter asking him to see us.

Within a week we were called to a private home in Highlands where we found a relaxed Ian Douglas Smith waiting for us. We sat on the floor and after we had presented our conclusions to him with supporting argument and facts, he responded by saying 'I simply cannot accept that we are not going to win this war, we are winning the war and I can see no reason for changing course.' Within six months, only 8 of that outstanding group of men were left in the country - the others just packed up and left saying that that they could see no reason to sacrifice their lives on a lost cause.

Three years later Smith was called to South Africa to meet a man called Kissenger (sic) and the South African President. It was the end of his political career. When finally he got to Lancaster House to negotiate the end of the war, he had lost the power to dictate anything except a short transition protecting the narrow short-term interests of the white community. In 1973 we had argued to Smith that he should settle immediately - negotiate the best deal he could and if you look at the proposals on the table at that time, had he done so he might have saved all of us a lot of stress and suffering."

Interesting.

So the top white leader of the MDC was a member of the racist Rhodesian settler army. In 1973 he and his Young Turks did an assessment of their military situation and found that they would lose militarily against the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), military wing of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) which at the time was led by Herbert Chitepo (assassinated in Lusaka, Zambia, on March 18, 1975).

Based on their assessment of a military defeat Cross and his colleagues sought to obtain a solution that would serve the best interests of the white settlers ("...the different ways to get the best deal out of the process of seeking a solution") rather than what what he lamented was obtained seven years later at Lancaster House in the United Kingdom ("...he had lost the power to dictate anything except a short transition protecting the narrow short-term interests of the white community").

Given that we know what the latter deal consisted off, namely the guarantee to the white settlers that, after independence in 1980, they would not have to return the land stolen from the Africans for at least 10 years and after that period only on the principle of "willing seller, winning buyer" one can deduce what "the best deal" Cross tried to persuade Smith to accept would have been.

Bro. Makheru. What do you think that "best deal" would have looked like?

Cross then continues and lays out the current strategy...

"The similarities with that situation and the one we face today are uncanny. Mugabe is winning the political skirmishes but losing the war. He is gradually being forced to retreat and lose ground. It’s a struggle he cannot win, this is a numbers game and its already lost. The longer he hangs on and tries to defend what he has the less influence he will have over its outcome.

Mr. Mbeki says that the talks will go on and that he will stick at it until a deal is reached. He is probably right to adopt such a stance as to abandon the talks route is to open the door to bloodshed and violence and this can only make the situation much worse. With the economy now disintegrating fast it is unlikely that the regime will be able to pay the civil service at the month end. Tax revenues lag government payments by about two months on average - in two months with 42 million percent inflation; those tax revenues will be worthless.

At yesterdays parade of the army, Mugabe thanked the Chinese government for a gift of new uniforms for the armed services - if he cannot get them to also pick up the tab on their salaries at month end he might face a real crisis and find himself, like the Rumanian President in the early 90’s, ending up a casualty and in no position to negotiate anything, not even where he should be buried."

And here...

"Kissenger (sic) wrote in his autobiography, that it was the saddest day of his life when he had to end the career of Smith in Pretoria. But in doing so he began the process that ended a long and bloody war that was only going to eventually conclude with defeat for the tiny embattled white minority and their supporters."

Which Cross follows up as thus...

"History has laid that mantle on the shoulders of [South African President] Mbeki. Eventually he will have to pull the trigger or someone else will do it for him. Like all unpleasant tasks it is best not to dilly-dally about what is inevitable."

Meaning that Thabo Mbeki now has inherited Henry Kissinger's mantle.

And who is the "someone else who will pull the trigger"? I certainly can not think of any African head of government that is any more powerful than Mbeki.

By the way. If the Rhodesians already knew in 1973 that they would lose the war against ZANU/ZANLA then the sudden auspicious 1975 release of Robert Mugabe from his ten-year long Rhodesian imprisonment which almost exactly coincided with successful ZANU guerrilla leader Herbert Chitepo's assassination in Lusaka in the same year, is interesting at the very least.

Why would the Rhodesians release a ZANU leader supposedly even more militant and uncompromising than Herbert Chitepo?

Why would Robert Mugabe concede to the white settler's supposed "narrow short-term interests of the white community" in December of 1979?

The argument is routinely made that Samora Machel, the late President of Mozambique where ZANLA had it's bases after 1975, forced Mugabe's hand.

In 1973, however, when Eddie Cross' Young Turks made the assessment that they would lose the war, Mozambique had not yet been liberated. Thus Mozambique was not the pivotal factor in the Rhodesian white settlers' long term defeat.

Why then did Mugabe give up the armed struggle against the tottering Rhodesian white settler regime in exchange for a verbal promise from the British that they'd provide the funds to buy any white "willing sellers" out?

Well, that's just crazy 'ole me asking.

In any case.

Eddie Cross inadvertently revealed some truth.

Woe onto Zimbabwe.

__________________________________________

P.S.

And lastly, this goes to David "Blacks in Zimbabwe (and everywhere else) are less intelligent than White People" Mills. Interesting that a bunch of rag-tag "lower intelligence" African peasants forced the Rhodesian white settlers into an assessment that they would lose a war against these "black dummies" after only two years of guerrilla warfare.

Posted by Michael Fisher at 7:14 AM

Labels: MDC, RHODESIA, RHODESIANS

posted by MrK @ 8:00 PM