(LUSAKA TIMES ZM) President Mugabe was maligned because of his crusade to bring social justice and equity to Zimbabwe-KK
September 6, 2019 249 20
First Republican President Kenneth Kaunda has said that it is regrettable that the late President Robert Mugabe was maligned and subjected to mudslinging by some sections of the world who were against his crusade of bringing social justice and equity to Zimbabwe.
In a message of condolences sent to Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa and availed to media in Lusaka today, Dr Kaunda said that President Mugabe was unfairly slapped with economic sanctions that hurt the people of Zimbabwe.
Dr Kaunda said that he is devastated by the death of former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, adding that his death was a moment of heartbreak and sadness for him.
Dr Kaunda recalled that President Mugabe worked hard to fight colonialism, racism, as well as bringing independence to Zimbabwe.
The 95-year-old founding father referred to the late Mugabe as a brother and colleague in the common struggle of liberation for Africa.
Dr Kaunda told President Mnangagwa that he prays that unfriendly forces will not rise and vilify President Mugabe for his governance and development record during his reign in Zimbabwe.
Dr Kaunda prayed that God will comfort Mr Mugabe’s family and the people of Zimbabwe during their time of grief.
President Robert Mugabe died today Friday September 6, 2019 aged 95, in a Singaporean hospital where he has been receiving medical treatment.
The late Mugabe ruled Zimbabwe for 37 years from 1980 to 2017 when he was deposed by the military in a bloodless transition of power.
Labels: KENNETH KAUNDA, ROBERT MUGABE
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COMMENT - Gukurahandi is a political football, whose numbers were continuously inflated by the rhodesian leadership of the MDC.
We won’t join the demonization of Mugabe
By admin
Posted on September 7, 2019
By Andile Mngxitama
It’s interesting how the white power structure determines our emotions and how we recollect our own suffering. After the Gukurahundi that spanned from 1983 to 1987, the number of Ndebele people murdered was estimated to be around 5000 or so. A large number by any estimate.
The West was then happy when President Robert Mugabe spoke reconciliation. They thought that they had softened him by knighting him and conferring on him numerous medals and recognitions. He was also the recipient of many awards, including human rights awards. In honoring Mugabe they had strategically forgotten about the Gukurahundi.
Come the year 2000! The land return program starts and things change. Mugabe is now a monster. The people who gave him human rights awards now remember the Gukurahundi and up the number of death to 20 000!
Gukurahundi was a horrible inexcusable event. It should have been handled differently. Having said that, we must keep in mind that the South African apartheid regime and Ian Smith were organizing a counter revolution from Matabeleland. They were taking advantage of the tribalism that had affected the liberation movement in Zimbabwe. The apartheid regime had already done it in Angola via Unita; Mozambique via Renamo and South Africa via the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).
There are important questions still to be answered from a revolutionary point of view about what the available options to stop the counter revolution, really were?
What we must resist is the demonization of Mugabe that is ordered by Britain and the larger global white power structure. They hate Mugabe because he addressed the land question. NO, we won’t be told by them to hate one of our own.
Andile Mngxitama is the President of Black First Land First, a revolutionary black consciousness movement.
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Labels: BFLF, LAND REFORM, ROBERT MUGABE
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(BLACK OPINION SA) ‘Hands off President Robert Mugabe’ – BLF
By admin Posted in Featured Politics
Posted on September 8, 2017
BO Staff Writer
Radical black consciousness movement, Black First Land First (BLF), has come out in defence of Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, after African National Congress (ANC) Secretary General, Gwede Mantashe, dismissed Mugabe’s comments about the ANC selling out its people during the 1994 negotiations.
Mugabe has on numerous occasions told his Zanu-PF party supporters that Mandela only negotiated for his freedom from jail and not for the economic emancipation of the majority black people.
Read BLF’s full statement below:
BLF says President Mugabe is correct about South Africa
Black First Land First (BLF) stands with the president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, in his observation that the South Africa struggle was compromised, firstly by a very poor understanding of the national question.
The ANC in its whole articulation of what the central contradiction in South Africa is, has been wrong. It was wrong from its establishment, it was wrong in Kliptown 1955 and again proven wrong in 1994 with the massive compromise with the settler colonial regime.
As a result of the failure to understand what is the central contradiction in South Africa, the ANC has put black people in a situation where we are a landless majority, a powerless majority, a majority without dignity, freedom and our land. President Mugabe is therefore correct to conclude that it was wrong for the ANC and all its former presidents, including the late O.R. Thambo, late N.R. Mandela, to have conceded so much to the white settler population.
It is nonsensical for Gwede Mantashe to speak back in his neo-liberal response to President Mugabe.
Zimbabweans have their land back through a Chimurenga, led by President Mugabe which has brought real independence to the country. Zimbabwe stands as a beacon of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism in Africa.
The ANC has failed in the past 23 years to return land to black people. The ANC has failed in the past 23 years to end racism and white supremacy. Only now has President Jacob Zuma of the ANC attempted to chart a different path toward Radical Economic Transformation. We are aware that even he does not have the support the of the full ANC.
That is why in the 2017 ANC Policy Conference the party failed totally to resolve on important question such as:
1. Land expropriation without compensation
2. The fact that the central contradiction remains the power of White Monopoly Capital
3. The ANC fails to endorse the fairly moderate Mining Charter as articulated by the Minster of Mines, Mosebenzi Zwane
BLF is absolutely clear that the ANC has to redeem itself by focusing on addressing the central contradiction in South Africa and stop wasting its time in speaking back to President Mugabe. He deserves our respect and reverence, not stupid tit for tat responses.
BLF says Hands Off President Mugabe. We call upon the faction led by Mantashe and other agents to follow the example of President Zuma and focus on RET, the return of the land and the sharing of the land through the mining charter.
The ANC has no moral right to speak back against President Mugabe. He is, and remains, a hero to the African revolution.
The ANC must still prove itself. Up to now it has sold black people to white settler colonialism.
Land or Death
Izwelethu!
ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL COORDINATING COMMITTEE OF THE BLACK FIRST LAND FIRST MOVEMENT (BLF NCC)
8 September 2017
Black First Land First Email:blackfirstlandfirst@gmail.com
Facebook: Black First Land First
Twitter: @black1stland1st
Website: www.blf.org.za
Zanele Lwana
(Deputy President)
Cell: +27799867225
Lindsay Maasdorp
(National Spokesperson)
Cell: +27 79 915 2957
Brian Tloubatla
(Deputy National Spokesperson)
Cell: +27 82 216 7664
Labels: ANC, GWEDE MANTASHE, LAND REFORM, ROBERT MUGABE
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COMMENT - From Netfa Freeman.
Interview with Jared Ball.
(BLACK AGENDA REPORT) Clearing the Smoke and Mirrors Around Zimbabwe
Netfa Freeman 29 Nov 2017
“The West, led by Britain and the U.S., have been engaged in a regime policy against the Southern African nation for the last 18 years.”
Reasons for examining what is happening in Zimbabwe are many but few to none can be found in accounts by major news media or from liberal progressive pundits. Such accounts are busy reinforcing the over simplified and misinforming narrative that forcing out former 93 year-old president Robert Mugabe marks the end of 37 years of brutal dictatorship that has driven the country into economic disaster.
The over simplified version being fed to the general public is that everything kicked off after Mugabe fired a disagreeable vice-President. Zimbabwe is to be seen as just another African country with a long reigning dictator who presides over the repression and impoverishment of his own people who really are unable to govern themselves without the aid of the benevolent West.
Since the November 14th reports that Zimbabwean army tanks were seen heading towards the capital Harare in the middle of rising tensions between President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF and the military, led by one of Zimbabwe’s Vice-Presidents, Emmerson Mnangagwa, the ultimate political outcome is still unfolding. In short, the story has seen Mugabe first put under house arrest by the military, many of his high level supporters arrested, and eventually, after initially appearing to refuse, Mugabe was pressured into resigning to be replaced by Mnangagwa who was sworn into office last Friday.
“Greg Elich also challenges the portrayal that ‘All Zimbabweans… are happy at the turn of events.”
Unsurprisingly, these new political developments reawakened the Western news media’s fixation with Zimbabwe because the West, led by Britain and the U.S., have been engaged in a regime policy against the Southern African nation for the last 18 years. The accompanying media campaign makes it necessary to look for an honest examination of “What’s Behind the Military Coup in Zimbabwe ” -- as in the recent CounterPunch.org article by Greg Elich. Using an assortment of sources that include a September Reuters report claiming to have obtained hundreds of internal documents from Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organization, Elich dispels distracting narratives like the claim that the coup was to prevent maneuvers by Robert Mugabe’s wife Grace from becoming his successor. Elich also challenges the portrayal that “All Zimbabweans… are happy at the turn of events,” explaining why photos and footage mainly showing demonstrations in the capital Harare “aren’t necessarily reliable. Opposition backers predominate in the cities, whereas Mugabe’s support is heavily concentrated in rural areas, where it can have little political effect.”
The rural areas are also where Zimbabweans have most benefited from the fast track land redistribution policy initiated in 2000.
Liberal progressives like activist Bill Fletcher , who also hosts and produces the Washington DC based radio show ARISE, gives progressive cover to old and misinformation and falsehoods about Zimbabwe. In these portrayals it is acknowledged that Mugabe and many of the ZANU-PF leadership are not your typical “African dictator” variety and instead arose from the liberation struggle. But on the November 24th show of ARISE Fletcher buttressed old and refuted lines straight from imperialism’s talking points.
Among these points are the claims that ZANU-PF’s 2000 fast track land reclamation was a failure and only benefited cronies of the party and President Mugabe; that the political and economic mission of the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is unclear; and that the dire economic conditions of the country are due solely to the corruption, irresponsibility, and mismanagement of Mugabe.
“Bill Fletcher buttressed old and refuted lines straight from imperialism’s talking points.”
It would have been difficult for the show to feature any other angle, given that one of the guests was Scott Taylor, professor at Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service, whose credentials include serving as a consultant for USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), the African Development Bank, and the World Bank.
Flecther’s other guest was Nii Akuetteh, founding Executive Director of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), an arm of George Soros’ “network of foundations."
Much of the misinforming propaganda being resurrected by Western media and reinforced by liberal progressives has been refuted in the 2010 major study, Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myths and Realities , by Institute of Development Studies Fellow Ian Scoones, with Zimbabwean colleagues Nelson Marongwe, Blasio Mavedzenge, Felix Murimbarimba, Jacob Mahenehene and Chrispen Sukume. The book challenges five myths through a detailed examination of field data:
Myth 1 - Land reform has been a total failure
Myth 2 - The beneficiaries have been largely political 'cronies'
Myth 3 - There is no investment in the new resettlements
Myth 4 - Agriculture is in complete ruins creating chronic food insecurity
Myth 5 - The rural economy has collapsed
The book uses evidence to argue that the land reform program may well be the foundation needed for broad based economic efficiency and new livelihoods in the fight against poverty.
The study finds that while production crops for export declined, other crops “such as small grains, edible beans and cotton” for domestic use increased or remained steady. “A core group of 'middle farmers' -- around half of the population in the Masvingo study areas -- are generating surpluses from farming.”
There is substantial agricultural production on small farm holders, with the majority producing enough to feed their families and sell to local markets in good rainfall years.
“Significant investment in the new land has included plot clearings, well digging and home building. In addition, schools have been built, roads cut and dams dug. New market connections are being forged, unleashing a dynamic entrepreneurship in the rural areas.”
“A core group of 'middle farmers' -- around half of the population in the Masvingo study areas -- are generating surpluses from farming.”
We can be sure that the major factor impacting the Zimbabwean economy was not the shopping habits of First Lady Grace Mugabe. This is not to say there was no mismanagement of the economy on the part what is a parliamentary government. The major factor responsible for the spiraling inflation is, however never mentioned by the major media. That would be the pervasive EU and US sanctions against Zimbabwe -- a type of warfare without guns and bombs. The hypocritically entitled “Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001,” a.k.a. ZIDERA, is the U.S. sanctions legislation that explicitly designed to damage the economy by denying any extension of credit and loans to the government or any balance of payment assistance by international financial institutions. They also actively dissuade investments in, or trade with the country. This has had devastating effects on the ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe in multitude of ways, a fact that Western media and liberal progressive pundits never fail to ignore.
The symptoms of these sanctions are pinned on “Mugabe’s economic mismanagement.” Rarely does anyone ask scrutinizing questions like those of Ugandan journalist, Timothy Kalyegira: “Before the Mugabe Government started uprooting the white farmers in 2000, his Government kept inflation at 5 percent, 8 percent (or 11 percent in difficult years.) How, then, does a country with all the same factors and leaders from 1980 to 2000 suddenly (because the white commercial farmers have been uprooted) see inflation soar to world record levels in a space of just six years starting in 2000? And how is it that a stable Zimbabwe has an inflation rate 1500 times higher than Somalia, a country without a government since 1991?”
“The major factor responsible for the spiraling inflation is the pervasive EU and US sanctions against Zimbabwe -- a type of warfare without guns and bombs.”
The Western press is notorious for largely ignoring Africa. So we should ask why Zimbabwe so easily makes breaking news and headlines when the repression and rape of countries ruled by U.S.-allied leaders like Uganda, Rwanda, and Congo goes virtually unnoticed.
The renewed attention is because imperialism’s protracted strategy is apparently bearing fruit. Unable for a host of internal reasons to raise its hegemony through the opposition party MDC, which they literally created and poised to usher in a neo-liberal agenda, current developments seem to bare out the assertion of former U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell who in 2007 wrote in a leaked Wikileaks cable , “Our policy is working and it’s helping drive changes here. What is required is simply the grit, determination and focus to see this through. Then, when the changes finally come we must be ready to move quickly to help consolidate the new dispensation…”
We now seem to be witnessing a “say it ain’t so” moment. Since the resigning of Mugabe and the instatement of Mnangagwa as Zimbabwe’s President, a number of foreign officials have paid “courtesy calls” to the new president, including Britain’s Africa Minister Rory Stewart, who pledged that Britain is ready to strengthen its relations with Zimbabwe and, “On sanctions, I have to be clear, there are now very few sanctions on Zimbabwe. Sanctions are left on a few individuals. The only outstanding question here is of international financial assistance from organizations like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, but we have already begun discussions to have the embargo lifted.”
Imperialism would hardly make such a commitment unless they were certain their economic interests were secured.
“We should ask why Zimbabwe so easily makes breaking news when the repression and rape of countries ruled by U.S.-allied leaders like Uganda, Rwanda, and Congo goes virtually unnoticed.”
Amid rumors that that land would be returned to large-scale white farmers, Emmerson Mnangagwa declared to the contrary that “the land reform program was unavoidable and shall not be reversed.” But he promised that those white farmers who lost property would receive compensation.
At the moment it looks as if one of only two of Africa’s remaining hold outs from imperialism’s world domination has succumbed to pressure. But there is much more to unpack and the people’s struggle is a story that never ends.
The lessons for the international struggle for self-determination, justice and against capitalist imperialism are always more complicated than we can get from the most readily available sources.
The people of Zimbabwe and the whole of Africa must find a way to forge an expressly anti-capitalist mass movement toward processes of participatory democracy where the people can devise and implement their own social programs that benefit the most disenfranchised classes. Much like the movements that emerged in Latin America and were attempted in Burkina Faso under Thomas Sankara. It would seem this is best safeguard against the aggressions of imperialism. We must concede that the land reform and "indigenization acts" were inadequate measures toward economic empowerment that kept capitalism and imperialism intact. We hope we’re wrong, but the neo-liberalism that now appears to be on the horizon has always in the long run ended in deeper and more sustained misery for the working class and rural poor populations of Africa and the world.
Netfa Freeman is an Analyst and Events Coordinator for the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a longtime organizer in the Pan-African and international human rights movement, and former Liaison for the Ujamma Youth Farming Project in Gweru, Zimbabwe. He also hosts and produces the radio show Voices With Vision on WPFW 89.3 FM.
Labels: COUP, NETFA FREEMAN, ROBERT MUGABE
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COMMENT - Rhodesia was named after Cecil John Rhodes, the
Founding Chairman of the board of directors of De Beers, which was to become the world's largest diamond mining company.
De Beers was founded by the First Lord Rothschild in 1887. Zimbabwe could seriously upset the diamond market by supplying 20% of global diamond production from the Chiadzwa and Marange diamond fields.
Morgan Tsvangirai used to work for Anglo-American De Beers when he was a miner.
"Morgan loves the mining industry because he was a miner and was given his start in life by Anglo American. He is a miner at heart but he sees both sides of the picture and this policy is not good for the workers or investors," said Tsvangirai's biographer Sarah Hudleston.
Or their desire to turn Chiadzwa and Marange into DebZim or ZimDeb, like Debswana and Namdeb - the
MDC's Plans For The Mines:
We will nationalise diamonds and ensure that government goes into partnership with genuine investors.
Like the world's biggest diamond miner, De Beers. - MrK
(MINT PRESS NEWS) Mugabe: The Dictator?
Is Zimbabwe’s 92-year-old leader really the oppressive dictator the West makes him out to be, or is he demonized for not succumbing to a history of destabilization and intervention attempts by the West?
By Caleb T. Maupin | August 27, 2016
WASHINGTON — (Analysis) In covering a recent protest movement unfurling in Zimbabwe, mainstream Western media seem unable to report on country’s president without making references to him as a “dictator” and “authoritarian.”
Yet the case against Robert Mugabe, the 92-year-old president of Zimbabwe and leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), is difficult to justify, especially considering all of Zimbabwe’s recent elections have been monitored by the United Nations, and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the main opposition party, currently divided into two factions, is widely represented in the government.
Further, Zimbabwe’s emergence as a nation struggling against not just the power of colonialism and white supremacists, but also the economic domination of a settler minority, tells an entirely different story.
Opposition parties like the MDC, which receives support from the United States, are allowed to operate freely in Zimbabwe. Newspapers that support the MDC and openly praise the previously existing apartheid regime are widely distributed, coexisting alongside pro-government state media. The idea that Zimbabwe is a totalitarian state that forbids dissent is simply not consistent with reality.
While Western media has few positive things to say about Mugabe, Zimbabwean voters clearly disagree. A 2015 survey by Zimbabwe’s Mass Public Opinion Institute found that Mugabe continues to enjoy popularity among the country’s urban and rural populations.
Even in 2012, a year before the last elections were held, popular support for the MDC was on the decline. In May 2013, The Guardian quoted Raymond Majongwe, secretary general of the 14,000-strong Progressive Teachers’ Union, as saying: “I’m feeling seriously let down by the MDC.”
His statement came after the party entered into a power-sharing agreement with the ZANU-PF following contested elections in 2008, but before that so-called “unity government” ultimately dissolved. He noted, presciently:
“The power-sharing agreement could be the undoing of the MDC leadership. They exposed their own naivety and appetite for opulence and extravagance. In four years the level of wealth these MDC guys have accumulated is shocking. If the MDC wins the election, fine, they can go ahead and loot the country like their predecessors.”
US has long planned to oust Mugabe
U.S. machinations to overthrow the Mugabe-led government in Zimbabwe are nothing new, particularly in terms of Washington’s support to the MDC.
Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the MDC, who served as prime minister from 2009-2013, toured the world in 2009, meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and U.S. President Barack Obama. After his meeting with Obama, Tsvangirai said he was “grateful to him for his leadership” and that Obama would “continue to provide us with direction.”
In “Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The U.S. Record 2005-2006,” the State Department reported: “The U.S. human rights strategy in Zimbabwe focused on maintaining pressure on the regime, assisting democratic forces, strengthening independent media, increasing public access to information, promoting accountability for the regime’s crimes, and providing humanitarian aid for Zimbabwe’s suffering people.”
The report further noted U.S. efforts to disseminate information on civil rights and made accusations of fraudulent parliamentary elections.
The State Department’s 2007 Performance Report on Zimbabwe boasted of the United States’ role in propping up the MDC as a viable opponent to Mugabe’s ZANU-PF:
“Following the bloody onslaught of the Mugabe regime against the MDC and civil society during the past year, USG [U.S. government] assistance helped rebuild the party’s battered structure and better position it to participate in the upcoming elections. The USG also assisted the MDC to effectively identify, research, and articulate policy positions and ideas within Zimbabwe, in the region, and beyond. In particular, USG technical assistance was pivotal in supporting MDC\’s formulation and communication of a comprehensive policy platform, which demonstrates the party’s preparedness to take over the reins of government in 2008.”
In a 2008 analysis of the document, Stephen Gowans, a Canadian writer and political analyst, noted:
“The neo-liberal, foreign investor-friendly economic policies Washington favors are central to the policy platform of the Tsvangirai faction of the MDC. The State Department document reveals that the MDC’s policy orientation may be based more on US government direction than its own deliberations.”
It’s also important to consider the role of U.S. aid money and the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, in Zimbabwe. The organization, which has a long history of imperialist intervention under the guise of humanitarian aid, has remained active in Zimbabwe despite targeted sanctions imposed by the U.S. In fiscal year 2012, for example, Zimbabwe received $152,534,664 in U.S. economic assistance, including $61,987,763 from USAID and $49,648,024 from the State Department.
‘Rhodesia’ was wiped off the map
To understand why Washington is working to topple Mugabe, the country’s repeatedly elected president, and the ZANU-PF, its internationally-recognized government, one must be familiar with Zimbabwe’s history.
Defenders of the Israeli settler regime will often accuse their critics of being “inflammatory” and “extremist” for wanting to “wipe Israel off the map.” However, there is historical precedent for the erasure of European settler regimes. Zimbabwe became a country after Rhodesia, a country whose 1969 constitution enshrined the rule of whites, was toppled.
Rhodesia was the name given by settlers to the region in southern Africa that the indigenous people called Zimbabwe. It was named after Cecil Rhodes, the famed colonizer and advocate of British imperialism. When Zimbabwe declared its independence from Britain in 1965, the white minority owned almost all of the land, except for the Tribal Trust Lands, where black Africans were forced to live, similar to the “bantustans” of South Africa. During the day, blacks worked as servants and laborers in the estates, plantations, and cities owned by whites, and at night they returned to the designated areas where they were allowed to live and farm.
Roger Riddell, a staff member of the Catholic Institute for International Relations and editor of the institute’s series “From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe,” wrote an article in 1980, titled “Zimbabwe’s Land Problem: The Central Issue.” In the article, Riddell explains that not only did Europeans hold vastly more land than the Africans, they also held more fertile agricultural land:
“The importance of land in Rhodesia does not lie so much in the inequalities per se, but because inequalities in access to land are accompanied by growing overpopulation, landlessness, land deterioration, and increasing poverty in the African areas alongside serious underutilization of land in the European areas.”
The 7 million Africans were not full citizens of Rhodesia, unlike the white minority, which peaked at just under 300,000 in the late 1960s. Ian Smith, the wealthiest white farmer and prime minister of Rhodesia from 1964-1979, said: “The white man is the master of Rhodesia, has built it and intends to keep it.” The country’s 1961 Unilateral Declaration of Independence, which was committed to independence from Britain but not majority rule, reserved 50 national assembly seats for the country’s white settler minority and just 15 for the African majority.
Receiving weapons and support from both China and the Soviet Union, the indigenous African population took up arms against Smith’s white-minority rule in the 1970s. ZANU-PF, currently the ruling party in Zimbabwe, is the result of a merger of several different armed revolutionary organizations that fought against the apartheid government of Rhodesia. Britain deployed troops to fight against the African people, and the U.S. formally recognized and backed the Rhodesian apartheid regime. International media and Western politicians generally referred to the uprisings of impoverished African people as “terrorism” and supported the white settler government in the name of opposing “communism.”
As the white settler government of Rhodesia faced a wider insurgency from African people, it became a favored cause among white supremacists. Neo-Nazis and fascists from all over the world went to fight against the African rebels. James Earl Ray, who was convicted of assassinating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had worked closely with the “Friends of Rhodesia.” During his 2015 killing spree inside a church in South Carolina, the white supremacist murderer Dylann Roof wore the flag of the long deposed Rhodesian settler government.
Mugabe emerged as the charismatic leader of the armed uprising. With Mugabe as their commander and representative, guerrilla fighters carved out what the white settlers called “no-go areas,” liberated territories which were controlled by the African revolutionaries and served as bases for the uprising. ZANU-PF described itself as a socialist party. Interviewed during the war, Mugabe said:
“It is absolutely wrong to allow a set of individuals to acquire control and ownership of those resources that are God-given. They are not man-made, the land, the water, the forest, the animals, the fish in the river, the minerals. These are given to us by nature, and it is in principle wrong for any one man to claim ownership of such resources that should belong to the people as a whole.”
On Dec. 21, 1979, the prolonged conflict known as the Rhodesian Bush War concluded with the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement. Rhodesia was abolished, and the Republic of Zimbabwe came into existence. The treaty specified that the new government could not seize white-owned land for ten years. At the time of the agreement, the country’s 120,000 white families controlled at least half of the country’s arable farmland, while 7 million Africans lived in extreme poverty.
Eroding white supremacy, changing property relations
Many predicted a “white genocide” following ZANU-PF’s election under the new constitution. However, once ZANU-PF assumed power in the elections following the 1979 treaty, no such thing occurred. Despite leading a “white republic” and ordering his troops to slaughter tens of thousands of civilians, Ian Smith, the leader of the white settler government, was spared any punishment for his documented war crimes. He lived in luxury on his estates until his death of natural causes in 2007.
Many whites left Zimbabwe, relocating to South Africa or Europe, but aside from a few incidents, no reports of widespread revenge killings took place. In accordance with the Lancaster House Agreement, whites who were owed pensions by the oppressive Rhodesian apartheid government continued to received payments from the new government until 1990.
The government led by ZANU-PF vastly expanded access to education, and Zimbabwe leads Africa in adult literacy. During the 1990s, the economy of Zimbabwe, presided over and tightly regulated by the ZANU-PF, was described by the Washington Post as being “among the strongest on the continent.”
The ZANU-PF government stayed true to its promise not to forcibly redistribute property until 1997, long after the ten year period agreed to in the treaty. Prior to 1997, many white farmers left Zimbabwe, voluntarily selling their property to the state for negotiated compensation. Britain welcomed white farmers with open arms, and has even established Zane, a charity that supports whites who wish to migrate from Zimbabwe.
Beginning in 1997, land belonging to the white minority has been gradually, forcibly redistributed to Africans. Veterans of Zimbabwe’s revolutionary army were the first to receive land, and by 2011, over 237,000 African families had acquired their own land, while 300 white farms remained intact.
When the land seizures began, Western press reports alleged the land reform was corrupt and giving land only to government bureaucrats. However, The Zimbabwean published the results of a 10-year study of the program, which found that less than 17 percent of the land went to civil servants, and the overwhelming majority went to rural peasants, unemployed Africans, and others who were not deeply connected to government officials.
No one debates that the majority of those who have received land hold a favorable view of the ZANU-PF government. Following the land redistribution campaign, violence erupted on more than a few occasions when white farmers refused to give up land and held violent standoffs with government officials and locals.
‘We want to be left alone’
As the reforms began, Mugabe was subject to demonization in Western media. In 2000, ZANU-PF suffered its first major defeats at the polls and began sharing power with the MDC, which has received funding from the State Department and whose leader has openly admitted to taking “direction” from President Obama.
The redistribution process slowed agricultural production in Zimbabwe. The process of transitioning farms from the large plantations owned by white settlers, to small individual plots owned by African families, was difficult on its own. But it was also compounded by the fact that Africans who had never owned their own farms did not have easy, immediate access to many types of modern agricultural technology previously employed by white farmers. The U.S. made the economic situation far worse by imposing economic sanctions on Zimbabwe starting in 2001, heavily restricting its ability to export agricultural goods. The sanctions also limited Zimbabwe’s access to key agricultural imports needed to make fertilizer.
Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly in 2008, Mugabe said, “We want to be left alone.” He urged Western forces to stop meddling in his country’s internal affairs, and to allow Zimbabwe to alter its economic system toward one featuring a more equitable distribution of wealth.
Despite continued demonization in Western media, Zimbabwe continues to make economic changes. In December, Zimbabwe announced that it was adopting the Chinese yuan as legal tender. In exchange, the People’s Republic of China cancelled Zimbabwe’s $40 million debt to Chinese banks.
In March, Mugabe announced that the country’s diamond mines will be nationalized.
“Companies that have been mining diamonds have robbed us of our wealth,” Mugabe said. “That is why the state must have a monopoly.”
When making the announcement, Mugabe also pointed out that a recent drop in diamond prices has increased the frequency of swindling and corruption surrounding the already crime-stricken industry. Zimbabwe supplied about 13 percent of the world’s diamonds in 2013, but experts quoted by Reuters warned that the country is expected to account for less than 3 percent of the global supply this year.
The president criticized not only Western-owned mining corporations, but also those based in China, and argued that nationalizing the mines will ensure that the people of Zimbabwe get a fair share of the wealth created by their natural resources.
For those who follow U.S. foreign policy, it should be clear why Washington seeks an end to the rule of Mugabe and the ZANU-PF: Zimbabwe’s government is seizing control of the country’s natural resources, redistributing land, and cutting into the profits of Western corporations. Furthermore, Zimbabwe has aligned itself with China, an emerging economic rival of Wall Street.
Western intervention is never the answer
Western media and the CIA have learned to manipulate humanity’s basic feelings of compassion and solidarity for the purpose of conducting “regime change.” Media campaigns routinely highlight atrocities — both real and invented — and build up public opinion for “humanitarian intervention.”
This is the case in Zimbabwe, where Western media selectively report on corruption, violence and suffering in line with biases for regime change held by Washington and its Western allies.
It also happened in Libya, where NATO bombing and a coordinated campaign to topple the government of Moammar Gadhafi were carried out with the stated objective of saving the lives of innocent people. However, the result has been widespread chaos and poverty in what was once Africa’s most prosperous country. The previously stable country stands divided today, as rival factions battle for power, while militant groups like Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the terrorist group known in the West as ISIS or ISIL) have set up shop.
Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria have all suffered the effects of U.S.-backed regime change waged in the name of human rights. The populations that were championed as oppressed victims in the Western media broadcasts that built the case for intervention, are far worse off than before.
American media’s talk about human rights is selective. Governments that reject economic domination by American-based banks and corporations, and those which compete with them on the global market, become targets of demonization. Meanwhile, atrocities perpetrated by repressive regimes that cooperate with the U.S. are generally overlooked, or, as in the case of Saudi Arabia, supported.
A movement like the one unfolding in Zimbabwe right now — a movement championed in Western media and led by someone who has since fled to the U.S. — is unlikely to improve the situation of Zimbabwe’s people. U.S. efforts to cripple Zimbabwe’s current leader and party by funding the opposition isn’t evidence of U.S. concern for human rights; it’s evidence that Mugabe and the ZANU-PF aren’t adhering to the rules of U.S. hegemony and Western dominance.
While Zimbabwe certainly faces social and economic challenges, the Pentagon will not solve them. Western destabilization and intervention will make matters worse. Only the African people — people who have defeated an oppressive regime and rolled back the horrors of white minority rule — only they can lead the country forward.
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Labels: COLONIALISM, GLOBALISATION, MDC, NEOCOLONIALISM, REGIME CHANGE, ROBERT MUGABE
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COMMENT - President Mugabe is one of Africa's last Liberation War Heroes.
A woman from Eritrea sitting next to me in the gallery whispered: “He is a legend!” There were tears in her eyes. And when I told her later that I came from Zimbabwe, she looked at me with disbelief. “You are from there? You don’t know what you have,” she said rubbing tears from her eyes. ‘Go and tell them we can have the UN headquarters moved from there. It was a mistake to have it there in the first place.”
(THE PATRIOT ZW) Mugabe holds AU spellbound
By
Alexander Kanengoni -
February 4, 2016
Recently in Addis Ababa, Ethopia
THE problem at the AU summit in Addis Ababa last week began when the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, took to the podium and, like a school head teacher, accused African leaders of bad governance and undemocratic practices, singling a few for praise.
“Leaders should not use undemocratic constitutional changes and legal loopholes to cling to power. Leaders must protect their people, not themselves,” he lectured. It was not difficult to guess the leaders he meant. He was so authoritarian and swashbuckling you couldn’t believe it was the same man who cringes at the sight of the Americans and the Europeans at the United Nations. He praised President Alpha Conde of Guinea, President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson of Liberia, President Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone and Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.
That is how the problem began.
So that by the time President Robert Mugabe, the outgoing chairman of the AU took to the same podium to deliver his farewell message, he put aside his prepared speech and for 20 minutes, spoke directly to the UN Secretary- General a few metres away from him.
“It’s a pity I speak immediately after the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas because he represents a problem the UN has failed to resolve for decades. How long will the UN stand idle while Israel demolishes Palestinian homes and builds houses for its citizens on the rubble?” he asked the secretary-general.
Then he lambasted the undemocratic nature of the UN and how that has to change. He lamented the routine pilgrimages to New York each September to deliver hollow speeches in the General Assembly that no one listens to because decisions are made by the five members in the UN Security Council. He decried the hopeless position of the African because the whiteman deems him inferior. He warned if that is not changed and Africa given a permanent seat in the Security Council, they may pull out of the UN.
“Go and tell them that,” he challenged Ban Ki Moon, who kept holding his head down.
The summit responded with an ovation that rose and rose, rising to the roof of the conference center. Someone in the gallery screamed. President Yahya Jammeh of Gambia, unmistakable in his trademark white flowing gown and matching turban stood up clapping his hands. Then Paul Kagame of Rwanda followed, then Mahommed Buhari of Nigeria, then they all stood up. Later, everyone would agree it was an unprecedented historical moment. Jacob Zuma looked around and hesitated; you saw it in the way he looked around and the cumbersome manner in which he eventually rose. Robert Mugabe was writing his own bit of African history.
Yet he had not even started giving the grim details of the African story. He began with the horrible story of the slave trade when millions of Africans were shipped across the Atlantic to America to work in their sugar and tobacco plantations. That humiliation was followed by the colonisation of the continent until we had to take up arms to fight for our freedom and independence.
He remembered how Charles de Gaulle refused to grant Algeria independence because, he argued, it was part of France. There was a bloody 10-year war from 1954 to 1962 that claimed the lives of more than 300 000. Franz Fanon, a medical doctor who treated the wounded in that war would chronicle his ghastly experience into a historic book on the plight of the oppressed, The Wretched of the Earth.
Robert Mugabe remembered Ben Bella, the leader of that revolution and his enduring words at the formation of the OAU in Addis Ababa in 1963: “We must all die a little for people in apartheid South Africa to be free”. The sentiment constituted the bedrock upon which the philosophy of pan-Africanism was founded.
I looked down at Jacob Zuma from the gallery. He fiddled with a sheaf of papers on the desk in front of him. Perhaps he had been reminded of the xenophobic attacks that swept across his country in 2013 and left many fellow Africans dead. It was perplexing how South Africans forgot the sacrifices Africa made so that they could be free.
Robert Mugabe remembered Julius Nyerere and how he set up the liberation committee to help liberate Southern Africa, how all the liberation movements were offered military training facilities in the country. He remembered Nigeria and the difficulty it faced to pay its obligation to the OAU because of the war in Biafra at the end of the 1960s. And once the war was over, how Nigeria paid its arrears of seven million pounds in a single staggering lump. He remembered Kwame Nkrumah, Africa’s inspiration. He also remembered how every country in Africa was once a colony and how they fought to be free.
A woman from Eritrea sitting next to me in the gallery whispered: “He is a legend!” There were tears in her eyes. And when I told her later that I came from Zimbabwe, she looked at me with disbelief. “You are from there? You don’t know what you have,” she said rubbing tears from her eyes.
‘Go and tell them we can have the UN headquarters moved from there. It was a mistake to have it there in the first place.”
Ban Ki-Moon forced a smile but kept holding his head down. You wondered whether he understood what Robert Mugabe was saying. If he did, as we say in Shona, he must have wished the floor swallowed him.
At the summit, Robert Mugabe was the voice of Africa. He raised the meaning of being African to a new level by defining an African who was not confined to colonial borders.
“I am an African and I belong anywhere in Africa,” he said.
It was evident at the summit Africa listens and believes in voices similar to Robert Mugabe’s voice, the voice of the founding fathers. He told the African story. His leadership left an indelible mark on the African political landscape.
In his acceptance speech, the incoming AU chairman, President Idriss Deby of Chad admitted it was a daunting task to come after someone like Robert Mugabe because of the high benchmarks he had left.
And yet Robert Mugabe’s own story has not been told. There has been a spirited attempt by outsiders, especially our former colonisers to tell it. Their stories are driven by a dark desire to demonise his monumental African legacy. The British will dismiss any attempt by an outsider to tell Winston Churchill’s story; that is indisputable. We have to tell Robert Mugabe’s story.
And when at last he went to his prepared speech, back to programmes and strategies to fulfil Agenda 2063, he had already bared his soul. He is an African hero.
Labels: LIBERATION, ROBERT MUGABE, UN
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(NEWZIMBABWE, NEWS24 SA) Malema says Mugabe is a blameless, exemplary African leader
02/07/2015 00:00:00
by News24
PROBLEMS in Zimbabwe are not caused by its long-serving President Robert Mugabe but by "capital", South Africa's Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema said on Thursday.
"President Mugabe is the only leader who knows for the real change to come, Africans will have to go through the necessary pain, exactly what Zimbabweans are going through now," he told reporters in Johannesburg when asked about his relationship with Mugabe.
"We don't see what's happening in Zimbabwe as anarchy. We don't blame it on President Mugabe, we blame it on capital... [It is] because they disagree with him politically, they use their economic muscle to punish the people of Zimbabwe."
Malema said Mugabe was the only African leader who continued to stand up against the west and who understood what it meant to be a real African.
He said the EFF might not agree with Mugabe on some issues, but from a broader perspective, the Zimbabwean leader represented the kind of Africa people wanted.
"How do you say a man who has won elections is a tyrant? He has never preceded over any massacre of our people; he continues to lead a party that advocates for very radical economic policies in Zimbabwe."
Malema lambasted those who felt Mugabe had over-stayed his welcome as president and that presidents should only stand for two terms.
It was fine for the rest of Africa to have presidents serve more than two terms, but not in South Africa, he said.
"I don't care if a president in Africa goes for a third term or for the fourth term, but not in South Africa.
"They can do it everywhere else if they want to do it... It won't work here in South Africa. Here it is two terms and go home."
Malema said he believed Africa should be governed by one leader, a leader like Mugabe.
"We want an Africa where trade will happen freely. We want an Africa that will one day have one currency and have one president and one government which will preside over this continent.
"We are one. These borders were imposed on us by colonialism."
Labels: EFF, JULIUS MALEMA, LAND REFORM, ROBERT MUGABE
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VJ asks EU not to bar Mugabe from summit
By Allan Mulenga
Fri 31 Jan. 2014, 14:01 CAT
VETERAN politician Vernon Mwaanga (left) has asked the European Union to rescind its decision to stop Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe from attending the European Union-Africa Summit, saying the resolution is tantamount to insulting African leaders.
The African Union has resolved to shun the European Union-Africa Summit if President Mugabe will be barred from attending the meeting.
But in an interview yesterday, Mwaanga argued that the European Union's decision to stop President Mugabe would be tantamount to questioning the integrity of African leaders.
"It will be an irresponsible act on the part of the European Union to block Mugabe from attending the European-Africa summit, because Robert Mugabe was elected in the elections which were declared largely free and fair by both the African Union and SADC," he said.
"If they don't respect the opinions of the African countries, which observe these elections, it will be tantamount to insulting African countries; it will be tantamount to saying that, we, Africans are not capable of observing our own elections."
Mwaanga accused the Western powers of imposing standards on African leaders.
"The AU and SADC prior to these elections had said that the elections which were held in Zimbabwe before were not free or even fair and the whole world said so. But this time around, after the adoption of the new constitution by a national referendum, and after observer missions from African Union led by eminent African statesmen like former president Olusegan Obasanjo of Nigeria and SADC declaring elections as largely free and fair," he said.
"The European Union has the duty to respect the views of African leaders. Because if they don't do that, it means that they are going to be imposing their own standards which are not consistent with African values, on Africa."
Mwaanga urged the European Union to rethink its decision to stop President Mugabe from attending the meeting.
"I do hope that the position is not irreversible and I do hope that the European Union will rethink its position, because if that is their position, then I am afraid, it is not a helpful decision and it is tantamount to questioning the integrity of African leaders through elections which were held in Zimbabwe," said Mwaanga.
On Tuesday, foreign affairs minister, Wybur Simuusa, disclosed that African Union had resolved to shun the European Union-Africa Summit if President Mugabe will be barred from attending the meeting.
Speaking in an interview after attending the agenda of the executive council of foreign affairs ministers in Addis Ababa ahead of the AU heads of state summit, Simuusa said the continental body had decided to adopt a common position on political, economic and cultural policies affecting the African Union.
Labels: EU, ROBERT MUGABE, VJ MWAANGA
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(NEWZIMBABWE) Biti in withering attack on ‘ailing’ Mugabe
23/01/2014 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter
Another Tendai Biti meltdown. - MrK
MDC-T secretary general, Tendai Biti, has launched a withering attack on President Robert Mugabe, insisting the veteran leader was ailing and effectively exposing his rule to a possible coup.
Speaking at a panel discussion on the government’s new ZimAsset economic blueprint held at a Harare hotel Thursday evening, Biti rebuked Mugabe and his Zanu PF party for failing to respond to the country’s mounting social and economic challenges.
“We are paralysed by a crisis of leadership; that you can have the chief executive officer of the country at 90. I know that there has been debate about the president’s health but in my respectful submission, being 90 is illness on its own,” Biti said to loud laughter from a packed gallery.
Minutes earlier, the MDC-T legislator had been the subject of both laughter and consternation from the gallery when he inadvertently fell backwards on one of the executive rocking chairs reserved for the panellists on the podium. But that did not dissuade him from his diatribe against Mugabe.
He described Zimbabwe as a “vampire state” that was never going to redress its economic woes without resolving its crisis of legitimacy as well as charming the international community for assistance.
“This is a government that is founded on vicious circles of exclusion, slogans of hatred, slogans of attrition personified in the head of state,” he continued.
“The man goes to the United Nations, the man goes, ‘shame, shame, shame, shame, shame’. You go to the Heroes’ Acre, when you read the speech, you just wonder who has been the target of this speech.”
Turning to his successor Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa, Biti said: “You have got a new minister of finance. Everyone is under attack, John Robertson, even poor Makandiwa, bankers and so forth.”
The MDC-T chief called for the immediate repeal of government’s populist indigenisation laws, stemming of the current closure of companies and commitment to funding social services if the country was to reverse its economic slide.
He accused his erstwhile colleagues in the disbanded unity government of having a “broiler chicken syndrome” which pushes them to spend uncontrollably government’s scarce financial resources on meaningless foreign trips without taking a moment to meditate on its consequences.
“The biggest problem with Zanu PF is that they don’t understand money and the economy. They are functionally illiterate. They think that money grows on trees,” Biti said.
How silly, we all know that money is borrowed from the IMF and World Bank, now don't we? - MrK
“People just believe in spending, spending, spending. It’s like a broiler chicken. The broiler just eats. It doesn’t know why it’s eating. It eats itself to death. It’s consumption for the sake of consumption.
Spending spending spending, instead of borrowing, borrowing, borrowing. - MrK
“It’s oblivious of where the food is coming from. It just eats 24 hours a day. So they have got a broiler chicken syndrome, they are oblivious kuti mari inobva kupi.”
Biti said the country’s economic crisis had become untenable, creating conditions for a coup.
“Those of you who have studied coups on the African continent you will find one common thing that is evident in those coups. Number one, there would be no leadership. It doesn’t mean there is no head of State at the state palace.
“He would be there but he is dead. He can’t offer directions to the economic problems that are affecting the country. He is indifferent. It’s almost like he is living in another country and reading about our problems on Facebook. If you have that, you have got a challenge. We have that in Zimbabwe.
“Number two - coups will occur where there is exclusion, where particular people, person, tribes or whatever feel that democratic processes are no longer working and tirikudzvinyirirwa so we have no choice but to resort to undemocratic processes.
“Thirdly where coups occur, the economy is not functioning. So we have the ingredients of serious social dislocation in this country.”
The other panellists at the discussion were former finance minister and now opposition Mavambo/Kusile/Dawn leader Dr Simba Makoni, renowned economist Godfrey Kanyenze and gender equality activist Virginia Muwanigwa.
Labels: MDC, ROBERT MUGABE, TENDAI BITI
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(NEWZIMBABWE) US-Africa Summit: Obama excludes Mugabe
22/01/2014 00:00:00
by AFP
PRESIDENT Barack Obama will invite 47 leaders to a landmark US-Africa summit in August, seeking to widen US trade, development and security ties with an increasingly dynamic continent to which he traces part of his ancestry.
Obama will send out invites to all African nations that are currently in good standing with the United States or are not suspended from the African Union - meaning there will be no place for states like Egypt or Zimbabwe. Obama will hold the talks on 5 and 6 August, seeking to cement progress from his trip to Africa last year.
A White House statement said the trip would "advance the administration's focus on trade and investment in Africa, and highlight America's commitment to Africa's security, its democratic development, and its people."
The idea for the summit, which takes place with Washington increasingly aware of China's attempt to enhance its diplomatic profile in Africa, was first announced by Obama in a speech in Cape Town in June.
Egypt, which has caused the Obama administration to thread a foreign policy needle with an erstwhile ally after a military takeover, is not eligible to attend as it is currently suspended from the African Union.
The United States maintains sanctions against President Robert Mugabe and key officials over suppression of democracy and what Washington sees as politically motivated violence.
Other notable absentees on the invite list include Sudan and Madagascar.
One notable inclusion is Kenya, where President Uhuru Kenyatta is currently awaiting a delayed trial at the International Criminal Court on charges related to violence after an election in 2007 that left 1 000 people dead.
The indictment has been one of the reasons why Obama is yet to visit the homeland of his late father as president.
But Obama has spoken to Kenyatta on the telephone, and the Kenyan leader has enjoyed more interaction with the outside world since a massacre at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in September claimed by Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab insurgents.
Labels: BARACK OBAMA, ROBERT MUGABE
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(NEWZIMBABWE) Mugabe ouster no panacea to problems
20/01/2014 00:00:00
by Fay Chung
MDC-T legislator Eddie Cross published an article on The Need for a New Road Map before Christmas last year. In it he made a brilliant comparison between the economic changes over the past three decades between China and Zimbabwe, during which China has increased its Gross Domestic Produce (GDP) and per capita income and become the workshop of the world while Zimbabwe's GDP and per capita incomes have shrunk. This is true.
He ended his article with a short paragraph where he appears to place responsibility for these developments on leadership, specifically the leadership of President Robert Mugabe whom he excoriates for being "cold and distant" and requiring "loyalty" from his followers. I find Cross' analysis very superficial. Yes, China has done very well. Yes, leadership is very important. But once again, we have the MDC-T take that if Mugabe and Zanu PF are removed, all would be well in Zimbabwe. This focus on a leader and a personality as the main problem in Zimbabwe is seriously misleading. The changes in China did not only depend on a personality.
Of course, we should judge cats on how well they catch mice. That phrase by Deng Xiaoping is true, too. But how can we simplistically say that "regime change" will change everything? One personality and one political party cannot change everything. What led to China's success is a little more complex than just a change in leadership. Note, of course, that the political party in power did not change in China: Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping both belonged to the same party, and in many ways, their key policies remained the same.
What Deng managed to do is to apply those policies to the world economy, while Mao concentrated essentially on internal policies. Both were correct for their times. China's success was due to the following: The Chinese modernised their industries. Their economy was one of the most backward in terms of industrial technology and management in 1979 when Deng took power. I can say they were more backward than Zimbabwe's technologies in 1980.Deng managed to begin the process of modernisation, sending 10,000 students to the United States to bring back the best industrial technologies and introducing China to modern management systems. These 10,000 students did well, and they are the core of today's industrial system. He applied the Singapore and Japanese model to China.
Zimbabwe's problem is that our industries are still stuck in the technologies and management systems of the 1940s and 1950s. Zimbabwe is certainly not technologically or managerially competitive compared to South Africa and China, our key industrial competitors. China's agricultural policy was based on food sovereignty and self-sufficiency from the 1970s onwards. Zimbabwe was self-sufficient in food in the 1980s, but this changed as a result of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme in the 1990s.
Food production got worse under hyper-inflation when fertiliser, seeds and the guaranteed Grain Marketing Board failed. While the MDC and its supporters blame this on the land reform programme after 2002, actually the problems began a decade earlier. It should be noted that China had one of the most drastic land reforms. So did Japan and all the other East Asian countries that have done so well over the past three to four decades. Availability of cheap food for all has been a characteristic of all the East Asian economies which succeeded in industrialisation.
The US opened its markets to Chinese products. Today if you go to the US, almost everything in every shop is made in China. This was equally true for Japan and other East Asian countries when they industrialised some decades before China: they benefited from the US market which is the largest globally. Africa, and especially Zimbabwe, does not enjoy such open access to the US market. Sanctions, comprising closing of the US and European Union markets, and curtailing Western banking facilities, have affected Zimbabwe seriously.
Almost all African countries, including Zimbabwe, concentrate on exporting minerals and agricultural products. In Zimbabwe's case, we are exporting raw ore and tobacco, both unprocessed. If Zimbabwe can persuade other mineral producing countries, especially our neighbours, to insist on beneficiation of mineral products, we can succeed. On our own, this is unlikely. China managed to get almost the whole population educated up to Grade 9 under Mao. The large population of China (1,3 billion) compared to the very small population of Zimbabwe (less than 13 million today) gives a very different labour market. China has a rich labour resource.
It also means that China has a huge domestic market. Zimbabwe is seriously short of labour, exacerbated by the exit of more than two million to South Africa and Britain. The minimum wage in the capital Beijing in 2012 was $150 a month, and it is much lower in rural areas. Better qualified Zimbabweans are demanding a salary of $500 per month. At almost every level from farm workers to top technocrats and managers, Zimbabwe is short of suitably qualified and experienced labour. Someone with a Master's degree or PhD can be paid $150 a month in China, and $300 in India. Africa, including Zimbabwe, cannot compete internationally.
China benefited from its huge diaspora, which began leaving China in the 1850s. This diaspora was responsible for the initial modernisation of industry and the economy beginning in 1979. Zimbabwe has treated its diaspora badly, and has not benefited adequately from diasporan technical, managerial, industrial and financial inputs. Yet the diaspora can be praised for supporting families during the sanctions period from 2002: nearly every family in Zimbabwe benefited from diaspora support in terms of food and other necessities. But the Zimbabwean diaspora has not invested in the economy or in industrialisation. Not even in farming.
The Chinese government gave very favourable loans to productive enterprises, especially into helping build infrastructure. Zimbabwe has failed to support infrastructure adequately, yet the infrastructure is absolutely critical to development. Last but not least it is not only Zanu PF which must adopt economic growth policies, the MDC-T and MDC and all politically-minded people need to come up with policies and not only look at personalities and political rhetoric. We also need to look at these policies in a practical, pragmatic and implementable ways.
Zimbabweans are great on rhetorical policies, but most of these great policies have not been implemented. Government has been waiting for others to implement, for example, foreign investors and donors. It should look inwards too.
Fay Chung was a cabinet minister from 1988 to 1993.
Labels: EDDIE CROSS, FAY CHUNG, ROBERT MUGABE
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(HERALD ZW) Bridget Mugabe dies
January 20, 2014 silence muchemwa Headlines, Top Stories
Herald Reporters
President Mugabe and First Lady Amai Grace Mugabe are consoled by Minister of State for Presidential Affairs Cde Didymus Mutasa at State House in Harare yesterday. Looking on are Acting President Cde Joice Mujuru and Cde Phillip Chiyangwa. – (Picture by Innocent Makawa)
PRESIDENT Mugabe’s sister Bridget Zve-nhamo Mugabe, who has been in hospital since 2010, died yesterday. She was 78. Bridget succumbed to heart failure at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals yesterday morning after spending more than three years on a life support unit.
She collapsed at the burial of her sister Sabina at the National Heroes Acre in 2010 and was admitted at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals where she has been in the intensive care unit until her demise yesterday.
Relatives and friends yesterday gathered at State House where they paid condolences to the First Family.
Acting President Joice Mujuru, Ministers Didymus Mutasa (Presidential Affairs), Walter Chidhakwa (Mines and Mining Development), Sydney Sekeremayi (Defence) and service chiefs were among the mourners.
Family spokesperson Mr Kaitano Mugabe told reporters at State House that Bridget would be buried at her rural home in Zvimba tomorrow.
He said Bridget’s body would be ferried to Zvimba today where it would lie in state before tomorrow’s burial.
Mr Mugabe described Bridget as a woman of rare character who was fearless and courageous. Her death, he said, had left a void in the family and her legacy would be forever cherished.
“During the liberation struggle when President Mugabe and his brother (Donato) were in prison, she paid school fees for the children,” he said.
“It was difficult for her but she did her best together with her sister Sabina who died in 2010. In the early 1960s, she was an active member of Zanu and she contributed immensely to the liberation struggle.”
He said Bridget trained as a Science teacher and taught at Ngezi and St Michael’s among other schools, adding that although they lost a beloved family member, they were happy that she had played her part.
“Obviously as a family we are aggrieved but God has done his will. We thank God for the time she spent with us,” he said.
“I think she will rest in peace because she played her part.”
Bridget is survived by daughter Lorraine and several grand children.
In 1966 Cde Mugabe was arrested for her role in the war of liberation.
She was one of the few cadres who assisted the seven gallant fighters who fired the first shots of the Second Chimurenga in Chinhoyi.
While she was a teacher at St Peter’s School, Bridget was one of the zanu-pfmembers who supported the group during their brief stay at Chinhoyi and thereafter survived torture at the hands of the Rhodesian security forces.
In an interview conducted by Moeletsi Mbeki, then a Herald staffer in 1986, Cde Bridget Mugabe said the freedom fighters told her what they expected her to do for them.
“It was like they were talking to their sister and I took them like my brothers. Each time they felt like calling in, they would come and tell me the time to have their food ready and at the agreed time, two or three of them would come back to collect the food,” she said.
Besides helping to feed the seven battle of Chinhoyi guerillas, she was given another task to distribute leaflets that had been brought by the guerillas from Zambia.
But before she could give them away, police became suspicious that she was helping the gallant fighters so she decided to burn them before they were seen by the police.
She left Chinhoyi on the day of the battle on April 28, 1966 and went to her home in Kutama where she was arrested together with her late brother Donato who was accused of helping another group of guerillas who had shot and killed a white farmer and his wife at Nevada Farm near Chegutu then known as Hartley.
She was tortured for over a month at Nevada Farm before she was released after she refused to talk.
“I remember one white Special Branch man pushing the nozzle of a revolver into my ear, freeing the safety catch and then demanding that I talk. They just beat me for the sake of beating and they went on and on until they were tired,” she said.
She added: “The ill-treatment did not just stop at physical assault, there were many attempts to humiliate me as well. One day a black Special Branch man made me sit on chicken droppings in the fowl-run and then slowly pulling out the metal rollers in my hair one by one. He struck me several times before spitting in my face.”
Labels: BRIDGET MUGABE, ROBERT MUGABE
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(STICKY) (HERALD ZW) President calls for new world order
June 14, 2014
Mabasa Sasa in Santa Cruz, Bolivia
President Mugabe has called for the Group of 77+China to be at the forefront of creating a global order that represents the interests and aspirations of downtrodden people and oppose domination by Western powers. The President said this soon after landing in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, yesterday where he will attend today’s 50th anniversary Commemorative Summit of the G77+China, which runs today and tomorrow.
President Mugabe is accompanied by Foreign Affairs Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi and other senior Government officials.
On arrival, President Mugabe inspected a guard of honour and was then treated to two displays of Bolivian cultural dance and music.
Thereafter, he addressed scores of people who had gathered to welcome him to the South American country, saying Zimbabwe would join the rest of the G77+China in fighting oppression and advancing developing countries’ interests.
“We should come together economically, come together politically, come together socially to form a really, really active and operational Group of 77 that will stand firm and can be relied on to protect our interests and aspirations,” President Mugabe said.
The G77 was established in 1964 and is the largest inter-governmental organisation of developing countries operating within the United Nations system.
Founded by 77 countries, its membership has grown to 133 covering Africa, Asia and Latin America, but retains its original name and continues to pursue development of South-South co-operation and co-ordination of mutually beneficial positions at the UN.
On Wednesday, Xinhua reported the host President Evo Morales saying Bolivia could afford to host the summit because it was “financially solvent thanks to the nationalisation of the energy sector”.
Leaders and their representatives are expected to discuss issues such as unemployment, poverty, climate change and food security.
A matter most participants are looking forward to is presentation by Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro of evidence of a United States-backed plot to assassinate him.
“We are going to show the evidence of assassination plots, implicating opposition leaders and US officials,” President Maduro has said.
Venezuela has experienced widespread destabilisation since the death of the iconic President Hugo Chavez last year, with opposition groups reportedly getting financial, technical and moral support from Washington to overthrow President Maduro’s government and undo pro-poor policies implemented over the past 15 years.
The choice of Bolivia to host the commemorative summit could not have been more inspired.
President Morales is Bolivia’s first democratically-elected leader from the indigenous population.
Morales’ administration has busied itself with poverty eradication, nationalisation and economic empowerment and eroding the influence of the United States and big Western corporations in the local economy and body politic.
President Morales has exacted more taxes from the hydrocarbons sector, has instituted agrarian reforms and boosted literacy.
Expectations are that he will be re-elected by a landslide in polls later this year.
Bolivia itself is named after Simón Bolívar, who died in 1830 and is considered one of the most influential politicians in Latin America’s history.
Bolívar was a soldier and politician who was instrumental in ending Spain’s colonisation of Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, playing a central role in the creation of a union called Gran Colombia, which he led from 1819 to his death.
The politics and economics of self-reliance and South-South co-operation are central to the ideology of the G77+China.
At their last meeting at the UN headquarters in the United States in 2013, foreign affairs ministers of the G77+China resolved, among other things, to maintain focus on poverty eradication and food security of their peoples.
“Ministers stressed that poverty eradication is the greatest global challenge facing the world today and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development . . .
“Ministers further stressed that, in order to enable governments of developing countries to effectively eradicate poverty, developing countries must ensure national ownership of their own development agenda, which entails preserving their own policy space backed by a strong political commitment to reduce poverty in line with their national priorities and circumstances.”
They also called for strengthening of the UN system and reform of multilateral lending institutions and the international financial architecture to make them more democratic, and debt restructuring.
“The ministers firmly rejected the imposition of laws and regulations with extraterritorial impact and all other forms of coercive economic measures, including unilateral sanctions against developing countries, and reiterated the urgent need to eliminate them immediately,” their declaration read.
“They emphasised that such actions not only undermine the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and international law, but also severely threaten the freedom of trade and investment.
‘‘They, therefore, called on the international community neither to recognise these measures nor apply them.”
Labels: CHINA, EVO MORALES, G77, NEW WORLD ORDER, ROBERT MUGABE
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(STICKY) (NEWZIMBABWE, REUTERS) Mugabe calls Moyo ‘devil incarnate’
06/06/2014 00:00:00
by Reuters
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe on Friday branded his information minister a "devil incarnate", accusing him of appointing editors of state-owned newspapers who were sympathetic to the opposition. Zimbabwe's private media say an intense battle to succeed the 90-year-old Mugabe has sucked in the state-owned press.
Vice-President Joice Mujuru and Justice Minister Emmerson Mnangangwa are seen as the frontrunners, while the veteran leader, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980, has said the contest is open to other Zanu PF leaders as well.
Mugabe said Jonathan Moyo, appointed information minister last year, was using the government-controlled newspapers to sow divisions.
"I am saying this in light of what is happening now. When you have our minister of information wanting to pit people one against another, you don't do things like that," Mugabe said in remarks broadcast on state-owned radio.
Moyo was a strong critic of Mugabe's rule while lecturing at the University of Zimbabwe before his first appointment as information minister in 2002. He was fired from the post by Mugabe in 2005 for standing as an independent candidate in parliamentary elections that year.
Moyo was withering in his criticism of Mugabe, calling him a "national security threat" in 2008, before he rejoined Zanu PF in 2009 and became one of the major architects of Mugabe's landslide victory in last July's elections.
On Friday, Mugabe told mourners at a funeral of a senior Zanu PF official that Moyo, a professor of political science, was trying to use his "knowledge and intellectual ideas" to destroy Zanu PF by appointing editors sympathetic to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
"I am saying this because all the men that we had, who were leading the newspapers, were fired and replaced by those from the MDC," Mugabe said.
"You were all thinking you had a trusted person," he said, referring to Moyo, adding that the minister was in fact "a devil incarnate".
Moyo has since his appointment last year changed editors at major state-controlled newspapers and also suspended the chief executive of state broadcaster ZBC.
Labels: JONATHAN MOYO, MDC, ROBERT MUGABE
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(NEWZIMBABWE) Bob’s lawyers pursue ex-PM over fees
07/01/2014 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter
LAWYERS who represented President Robert Mugabe in case filed by MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai have threatened to seize the ex-premier property unless he stumps up legal fees amounting to $8,000.
FG Gijima and Associates represented Mugabe in an Electoral Court petition relating to the general elections held on July 31 last year.
The MDC-T leader wanted Mugabe, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and the Registrar-General to release election material and information relating the Presidential vote management and results, which he was challenging at the Constitutional Court.
The application was however dismissed with costs by Justice Chinembiri Bhunu. Now Mugabe’s lawyers want the former prime minister to pay legal costs and taxing fees amounting to US$8 903,94.
“Unless we receive payment by close of business on 22 (November 2013) instant, we shall take out a writ and execute on your client’s property without further notice to yourselves,” Fred Gijima wrote in a letter to Tsvangirai’s lawyers.
Tsvangirai’s lawyers however told Gijima to hold his horses saying their client had appealed Justice Chinembiri Bhunu ruling at the Supreme Court.
“We have appealed against the judgment and we have to wait for the outcome of the appeal,” said Alec Muchadehama of Mbidzo Muchadehama and Makoni.
“What happens if we win the appeal with costs? We have to wait for outcome of the appeal and I understand the matter will be heard on January 23 this year.”
The elections were won by Mugabe and his Zanu PF party but Tsvangirai refused to concede, alleging fraud.
The MDC-T leader however failed with a challenge against the Presidential election results at the Constitutional Court.
Labels: MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, ROBERT MUGABE
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(BERNARD BUWONI BLOG) In Mugabe Africa must seriously trust!
By Bernard Bwoni
As the media circus hijacked the memorial service of Mandela, certain ideological African themes are becoming more prominent and ineradicably embedded. There is a resurrection of the belief in the African ideology and the resonant acclamation President Mugabe received at the mention of his name at the FNB stadium is affirmation of the credence.
The people of Africa, the real people of Africa know who their real heroes are and no amount of illusory media sophistry and air-brushing is going to change that. President Mugabe received a standing ovation and he did not even stand at the podium to give a speech. The man must be doing something very right. No let me rephrase that, the man is doing something right.
Legends are born, not scripted. It is that unwavering, lifelong and indelible ideological immersion to a cause that personifies Robert Mugabe amply. What is interesting to note is that the inexorable thunderous ovation for Mugabe was right in the glare of those hypocritical kingmakers with privy designs and ominous intent who have incessantly and historically misinformed and disinformed the world about Mugabe. The Mugabe frenzy that is sweeping across the African continent has no preclusion. Those with inauspicious intentions on Zimbabwe have tried suppressing and smothering the ideologically-congealed Mugabe mania for it to resurface again and again as happened at the FNB stadium. Robert Mugabe’s standing ovation was for an unshakeable belief in a cause and the ovation for Obama was sheer curiosity and that novel feeling of seeing a black man fronting the very threat to that African cause.
Robert Mugabe is an extraordinary African. A man with the black African cause permanently ingrained to his whole being is what defines him. Zimbabwe has been under siege and the man has soaked all the demonization and onslaught with an unparalleled tenacity and resoluteness. He is a principled man with an indefatigable bond to delivering his people from the implacable neo-colonial structure which manifests itself in many forms to continually quell the African quest for lasting and real independence which seeks to economically liberate the continent and its people. The tumultuous ovation he received in the FNB stadium was no gimmick. That was open recognition from real African people with an unfulfilled thirst for definitive emancipation and not the delusory independence they had to settle for. Robert Mugabe represents real hope for the masses with an unfeigned and authentic proposal to truly liberate Africa and Africans. Do not believe the media hype about demons and dictators! That is just a smoke-screen to asphyxiate the African economic genesis that has the unique bonafide raison d’être to uplift and upgrade the lives of black Africans. Aid and donations have not done it yet! Most definitely will never do it and Africans eternally declassed to beggars and burgers! No real meat, no substance just barebones. No foreign aid is ever truly altruistic and the sooner Africans realise that the better. Only pessimism, calamity and undesirable negative anticipation shapes black Africa in the eyes of those with baleful and exploitation-inspired intrigue on Africa and representation of Africa is in terms of absences, delinquencies and alien. Obama delivering a hot-air speech to the permanently economically crippled black people of South Africa at the memorial service of a revolutionary who could have forced an upgrade of their lives is one of the most strikingly sardonic moments in African history. As the themes continue to emerge, Robert Mugabe’s ideals are resonating well with Africans continent-wide.
South Africa, a significantly unequal society with one of the highest gini-coefficient rankings in the world is on the threshold of a riveting social and political malfunction. Someone somewhere failed to fully address the obvious inequalities which define and are deeply entrenched in this ‘Rainbow Nation’ today. The standing ovation for Robert Mugabe, a real driver for change to address the historically and racially skewed inequalities and to economically empower the black people of Zimbabwe, is affidavit to the inevitable cataclysmic unravelling in South Africa. Little brother will guide big brother towards the summit of economic freedom.
Robert Mugabe is a visionary leader period! The unique feature about this living legend is the unflinching fidelity to ideological course and epistemological substance. When South Africans stood up and gave a resounding ovation to the man who has dedicated his entire life to the Zimbabwean cause, the South African cause was instantly thrust on the agenda. The inequalities in South Africa are not going to be addressed by flamboyant oration from the neo-colonial point man of those who wish to indefinitely degrade Africans to eternal bondage. Africa must seriously starting putting trust in the Mugabe vision. The Mugabe inspired and perceptive astuteness which seeks to dismantle and restructure the neo-colonial DNA which continues to inextricably fasten Africa and its people to enduring subjugation.
Labels: INDIGENIZATION AND EMPOWERMENT ACT (ZIMBABWE), LAND REFORM, ROBERT MUGABE, ZANU-PF
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(NEWZIMBABWE) You can go to hell, Mugabe tells Tsvangirai
22/12/2013 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe put paid to any prospect of cooperation with ex-premier Morgan Tsvangirai Sunday, saying the opposition MDC-T leader and his party could “go to hell”.
Speaking in Bulawayo Sunday during the unveiling of the statue of the late vice president Joshua Nkomo who died in 1999, Mugabe appealed to disgruntled war veterans to return to Zanu PF.
“I am not talking about (Morgan) Tsvangirai and the MDC; those ones can go to hell. We say to those (war veterans) who are working with the enemy, can’t you realise the suffering that the people had to bear,” Mugabe said.
“The death and injuries visited upon them as they were in the struggle and you dare to work with the enemy against your own people? I am speaking about the stance of the opposition to be on this day running to Britain and America in order to stand against us.”
The Zanu PF leader insisted that he was not opposed to rival political parties.
“We don’t mind an opposition within the country. But an opposition that begs the enemy, the very country that oppressed us, that’s a bit too much. It’s treason; it’s treason of the worst kind,” he said.
Zanu PF accuses Tsvangirai of working with former colonial power, Britain to force regime change in Zimbabwe. The MDC-T leader denies the allegations.
Mugabe reached out to war veterans who left Zanu PF, urging them to re-join the party.
Former ZIPRA intelligence head Dumiso Dabengwa and disgruntled colleagues quit Zanu PF to revive PF Zapu ahead of the 2008 elections, apparently frustrated by Mugabe’s refusal to hand over power to a younger leader.
War veterans working with the opposition were disobeying Nkomo, Mugabe claimed.
“Yesterday he (Nkomo) was telling you to go to this area. So now that he is gone, you think as he is in the grave, he can now be disobeyed?
“So I am saying the war veterans, you fought one war against the enemy, whether you are Zipra or Zanla, come back and be where you belong, don’t get lost. Those (war veterans) are the ones who really make me cry because they were under us, under our command.
“They should never be disunited, they should be united, because the ideology that we based our struggle, whether we were friends with the Soviet Union or China it was the same. You settle your contradictions by sitting down and discussing.”
Dabengwa said he would consult with colleagues before responding to Mugabe’s appeal.
“I did not attend the event but some of us did and they will tell us what happened,” Dabengwa told the Bulawayo Chronicle.
“We cannot answer him (President) today. Remember, we did not leave Zanu PF as individuals but we left as a Zapu block. I therefore, cannot make that decision myself.”
Labels: MDC, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, ROBERT MUGABE
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(NEWZIMBABWE) Nkomo rejected Presidency: Mugabe
22/12/2013 00:00:00
by Newsday
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has revealed that he made several efforts to get Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo to become President of Zimbabwe at independence in 1980, but the late nationalist flatly rejected the offer.
The rejection, he said, was a sign of Nkomo’s humility. The presidency, at that time was ceremonial. Mugabe was then Prime Minister, the most powerful position in the country.
Speaking at the unveiling of the statue of the late nationalist who died in 1999 and the renaming of Bulawayo’s Main Street in the late veteran nationalist’s honour, Mugabe said he sent three delegations to convince Nkomo to take up the post of president, but he declined.
The post was eventually taken by the late Canaan Sodindo Banana.
Mugabe was in Bulawayo where he officially opened JN Nkomo International Airport, unveiled the Nkomo statue and officially renamed Main Street.
Mugabe said he offered the ceremonial presidency to Nkomo, but due to his (Nkomo’s) humility, he declined to take up the post.
“I personally asked Dr Nkomo to be president, but he said no,” Mugabe said.
“I sent another delegation, but again he said no. I sent a third delegation to plead with him, but he said no — such was his humility. Perhaps you didn’t know.”
“That’s when we had to ask the late Canaan Banana to be President. So you see, this is how humble Cde Nkomo was.”
Mugabe became Executive President in 1987 after he signed a peace pact with the former PF Zapu leader following about five years of political hostilities during which time about 20,000 people mostly in Matabeleland are believed to have been killed during the Gukurahundi disturbances.
Mugabe said he believed in peace, which was the reason why he forgave the white colonial masters for the atrocities they committed against the black majority before and during the liberation struggle.
Labels: JOSHUA NKOMO, ROBERT MUGABE, ZANU-PF
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(NEWZIMBABWE) Gukurahundi author is no African liberator
Cheered in South Africa ... President Robert Mugabe and wife, Grace, hold hands after paying their respects at Mandela in Pretoria
22/12/2013 00:00:00
by Paul Trewhela I Politicsweb.co.za
COMMENT - The writer cites Wikipedia? How about interviewing Breyten Breytenbach's brother Col. Jan Dirk Breytenbach, founder of the South African Special Forces' 1st Recce Commando, and ask him why he authorized the killing of white farmers in Zimbabwe for political advantage his unit Super ZAPU - see the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe's 1997 report. The psychological warfare operations that preceded whatever happened in Matabeleland, and should be acknowledged as part of the entire picture. The MDC is trying to milk this issue - which they care nothing about - for political gain. Also, the Catholic Commission mentions the number 3,750, not 20,000, which has remained unexplained. So the author at best is overstating the case when he tries to claim that "There is no question that Mugabe ordered the mass murder of more than 20,000 isiNdebele-speakers in Zimbabwe". An absurd charge, that does not take into account the events immediately following political independence in 1980. Finally, don't believe me, the way the author insists you should believe him - read the original report instead, and just search the terms breytenbach or super zapu. - MrK
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe received loud cheers when he appeared at the memorial tribute to Nelson Mandela at FNB Stadium in Soweto on Tuesday 10 December.
Similarly, Andile Mngxitama - who spoke on the BBC television programme, Question Time, two days later in a debate staged in Johannesburg, wearing the red beret of Julius Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters - published an article in the Sunday Independent on 2 June this year under the title, "Mugabe hero of African liberation."
According to Mngxitama's opening sentence, "President Robert Mugabe is the greatest black statesman alive today in Africa."
The question is: What does it mean, when South Africans celebrate Robert Mugabe?
There is no question that Mugabe ordered the mass murder of more than 20,000 isiNdebele-speakers in Zimbabwe in the two years after January 1983, when his Fifth Brigade - trained by the fascist dictatorship of North Korea, and responsible to himself alone as Prime Minister - was deployed to kill in Matabeleland.
Wikipedia states this about the massacre: "Most of the dead were shot in public executions, often after being forced to dig their own graves in front of family and fellow villagers. The largest number of dead in a single killing was on 5 March 1983, when 62 young men and women were shot on the banks of the Cewale River, Lupane. Seven survived with gunshot wounds, the other 55 died.
"Another way 5 Brigade used to kill large groups of people was to burn them alive in huts. They did this in Tsholotsho and also in Lupane. They would routinely round up dozens, or even hundreds, of civilians and march them at gun point to a central place, like a school or bore-hole. There they would be forced to sing Shona songs praising ZANU, at the same time being beaten with sticks. These gatherings usually ended with public executions. Those killed could be ex-ZIPRAs, ZAPU officials, or anybody chosen at random."
The word "Gukurahundi" is an expression in the Shona language, meaning "the first rain that washes away the chaff of the last harvest before the spring rains."
The grim reality of Zimbabwe is that both of its main political parties - ZANU and ZAPU - were and remain tribalist political parties, not nationalist parties. Both armies, ZANLA and ZIPRA, were in effect tribalist armies.
In the best first-hand account so far of the joint military campaign in 1967 by Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) together with ZIPRA in the Wankie and Sipolilo areas of Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia, under the white minority regime of Ian Smith), the two authors - both isiZulu-speaking members of MK, Thula Bophela and Daluxolo Luthuli - register their shock at when they and their comrades discovered this huge difference of principle between MK and ZIPRA.
"The ZIPRA men puzzled the MK soldiers," they write in their joint autobiographical history, Umkhonto we Sizwe: Fighting for a Divided People (Galago, Alberton, 2005). "They spent much of their time boasting about what they intended to do to ZANLA if they ever met up in the bush. They swore they would wipe them out....It seemed they considered ZANLA the real enemy and not the Rhodesians."
As the two authors recall, "This ZAPU-ZANU rivalry would cause us great distress later."
What happened, however, was this: between the Wankie/Sipolilo campaign in 1967 and formation of the first independence government of Zimbabwe in 1979, for a variety of reasons ZIPRA failed as a military force, while ZANLA succeeded.
ZIPRA, and ZAPU, rested on a minority tribe, the Ndebele. ZANLA, and ZANU, rested on the overwhelming majority tribe, the Shona.
The phrase "gukurahundi" for the campaign of mass murder of the amaNdebele by the ZANU government meant that the minority tribe was to be punished. Human beings were to be treated as "chaff", as dead dry husks of maize from the previous year's harvest.
The account in Wikipedia of the Gukurahundi genocide is consistent with the detailed, carefully researched account published by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe, together with the Legal Resources Foundation of Zimbabwe, under the title Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe: A Report on the Disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands, 1980-1988 (First published in 1997 as Breaking the Silence: Building True Peace).
Elinor Sisulu, the daughter-in-law of Walter and Albertina Sisulu, wrote the introduction for the 2007 edition. She rightly compares the "enormous and heinous crimes against the people of Zimbabwe" perpetrated by the government of Robert Mugabe in 1983-85 with the genocidal massacre of Tutsis carried out by the Interahamwe in Rwanda in 1994 and the massacres carried out by Hitler's Nazis.
I wonder if Mngxitama can explain how a Nazi-type massacre just north of Limpopo province permits a description of the man who ordered it as a "hero of African liberation", and as "the greatest black statesman alive today in Africa" (this written while Nelson Mandela was living).
There is a strange absence of moral and political integrity here.
Supposing we take a death toll of 20, 000 people murdered by Mugabe's Fifth Brigade in Gukurahundi (rather than the figure of "at least 30,000 people" cited in the preface to the 1997 edition of Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe), this was an enormous number of people killed in a small region in less than two years.
The number of people killed by the Mugabe government in this massacre is probably more than the total of all the political killings committed in South Africa in the 34 years from the beginning of 1960 (before the massacre at Sharpeville) to the first democratic general election in April 1994.
And this was carried out by a government whose leader was cheered at the memorial tribute for Nelson Mandela, and described by Mngxitama as a "hero of African liberation."
Strange liberation, which liberated so many souls so untimely from their earthly selves.Strange hero statesman, who gives the order to kill so many of his citizens ... Strange apostle of "freedom", the one who praises such a statesman, whether we consider freedom as economic, or political, or spiritual, or otherwise.
The fact is, the political tradition of liberation from minority rule in South Africa runs opposite to the tradition in Zimbabwe, not along the same path.
What Gukurahundi showed is that the title of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) is a fraud. The party is not national at all. It is a tribalist party, which carried out a mass tribalist massacre of people from another tribe.This can never be forgotten.
It is a shame and disgrace to the historic tradition of black liberation in South Africa that this blatant, blood-soaked truth is not shouted from the rooftops by all political parties, and especially by the African National Congress.
From the time it was formed as the Native National Congress in 1912, the ANC earned its title of "national" - unlike ZANU, and ZAPU - by its deeds.It was formed very consciously and deliberately on the principle of anti-tribalism. The founders of the ANC were clear that tribal politics could only lead black people of the newly-created Union of South Africa to defeat and misery. Despite all kinds of stresses and strains - especially in exile - that principle was upheld successfully throughout the whole of the past century.
Whether as the ANC, or as the Pan Africanist Congress, or as the Black Consciousness Movement, no major current in the struggle for liberation from apartheid ever fractured into separate tribalist parties, as happened in Zimbabwe - the great failure of political principle in Zimbabwe, which had its terrible result in Gukurahundi.
This is a warning to South Africa.There is no more urgent warning from the life and death Nelson Mandela, who maintained the principle of anti-tribalism throughout his life, and extended it to anti-racism.
It is a disgrace that a tribalist mass murderer was cheered, at the tribute to the man who epitomised the founding principles of the ANC.Shame on those who cheer Robert Mugabe, and shame on any South African who calls such a man the "hero of African liberation."
Labels: GUKURAHUNDI, ROBERT MUGABE, SUPER ZAPU
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