Voting against me is treachery: Mugabe

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News from Zimbabwe

Once Africas primary exporter of grain, Mugabe managed to mismanage Zimbabwe to the extent that it now requires food imports.

I certainly won't shed a tear in case he's ousted - but I fear he'll rather stay in power indefinitely until some of his goons have the courage to assassinate him. Such is life.

IMO Mugabe's the chewing gum sticking on Zimbabwe's shoe: It just can't get rid of him, no matter how hard it tries.

More links on this:
-Democracy dying in a land that lost hope
-Mugabe's vote-rigging and bribery set to secure easy victory
-Rallying cry belies Mugabe's fear of voter revolt

 

Oust him. He should have been ousted ages ago. His ZIPRA and ZANU goons should never have ended up in power. The Ian Smith government was way better, but the Empire had to strike.

 

Ian Smith's government was way better ??!

Only in comparison to Mugabe's rule. Smith was a keen and enthusiastic proponent of apartheid, which wasn't exactly such a great idea.

Smith's Zimbabwe was a great place to live in only if you were white.

 

Well, i personally hate Mugabe with a vengeance, and i wouldnt shed a tear if his illness caught up with him (am i still correct in saying he was suffering from a terminal illness?)

My family have good friends in Zimbabwe, and Mugabe has cheated them out of thousands, maybe over a million pounds (not to sure, im never allowed to know the precise numbers ) and the food shortage in the area is Insane.

From these friends i have heard many stories of Intimidation (just rumours tho) and of the vote rigging.

 

Ironically, Mugabe is a Christian pastor himself, by the way.

 

I really hope Mugabe goes down hard. He's corrupt, violent and has run his country into the ground. At least now we have undeniable proof of just how low a creature he is (as if there wasn't enough already); after all, isn't patriotism the last refuge of a scoundrel?

 

Just to play devil's advocate for a moment... why does anyone care what the regime is in Zimbabwe? Each of you has the choice to not live in Zimbabwe, so what does it matter?

I do agree that things look pretty bad there, but I am trying to decide whether there is anything to gain from my government supporting any international meddling in Zimbabwe's affairs.

 

Well Zimbabwe doesn't have any oil so no one is interested in toppling Mugabe like Saddam was.

 

Harborboy!
How can you say that! The Zimbabweans don't have the choice to live there! Isn't it our solemn duty to force down liberty and freedom down their throats, too, for their own good?

Sadly, these poor unwashed savages simply don't know what's good for them

 

You don't know how right you are Ragusa. Self inflicted famine?

I can see what is going to happen when the death toll for starvation reaches a million. Some loud human-rights advocates will start laying into the governments of various western countries and saying how naughty they are for not getting involved. Problem is there are only three ways to 'fix' the problem 1) Throw money at it and watch at least half go into Mugabe's pocket and the rest into his familys' pockets. 2) 'Remove' him and have people jump up and down about it not being our business (see: same people who layed into the government about not doing anything) and 3) Ask him nicely

He damned his entire country by buying votes with land. Frankly I would have thought better of him if he lied to get the votes by saying he would grant all the white land to the black people but not delivering. Rather he's damned the country and it'll take decades to recover.

Either the man's a complete idiot and therefore isn't fit for office or the man's a sadistic/evil bastard and needs a quick drop with a short stop.

 

You forgot on option. (4 Ignore the humanitarian organizations, which in my opinion is the best choice. Most dictators could not care less about international politics, they have enough domestic problems so they tend not to be a threat for anyone else than thmeselves, of course there are some exceptions.

 

It's a soverign country's privilege to ruin themselves rather than be ruined from a foreign ruler or colonial power. Africa has demonstrated this thoroughly.

You may well and correctly say that Mugabe is an incompetent blunderer and a despot - but he's *their* despot and *their* idiot blunderer, as opposed to the foreign leader of some arbitrary civilian provisional authority, a UN high commissioner or a foreign governor.

I think that Woodrow Wilson with all his lofty rhetoric and babble about the right of self-determination of the people (then aimed on breaking up the once mighty Austro-Hungarian empire into smaller and weaker sovereign states to counterballance Germany) has left one of the world's most destructive genies out of the bottle.

That gave us many of the conflicts originating later, especially the secessionist conflicts following de-colonisation, that were probably only justified in face of the chronically partisan clan politics in the new post-colonial governments, and of course by the ambition of the opposition leader. Economically they rarely made any sense at all.

In a fair and democratic country, take the small danish minority in Germany's Schleswig Holstein, ethnicity is no cause for trouble.

The whole de-colonialisation should have told any of the oh-so enthusiastic friends of democratising the, say, Middle East, that democracy has to *grow*, it cannot be imposed, or instated. It is the endproduct of a process.

Mugabe demonstrates how a despot can easily use the instruments and institution of a democracy, while being an autocrat. He has a parliament, he has elections, he is president and not king, he has a party - but he's a despot anyway.

The example of the numerous failed democracies, especially in Africa, is the reason why I doubt that democracy is, as the neocons utter, the final destination of human development (for that read Fukuyama's 'End of History'), or the best solution possible.
This babble is highly naive as it doesn't recognises what liberty and democracy are results of. Liberty and democracy didn't just fall from heaven one day.

Sometimes democracy clearly is not a good solution for a country, it might be much better served with a king or strongman - or a clan council with no leader at all.

Compared to the chaos the neocon idea of 'total democratic and neoliberal overhaul' plunged Iraq into, the 'conservative' approach (read: State Department) of an overthrow or exile of Saddam while retaining Baath rule would have in fact been much more advantageous for the Iraqis (and the US, too, as they would have much less to pay for).
There would have been no destruction of the state and it's institutional expertise, no looting, no loss of order, no destruction and loss of life thanks to a second war, no occupation and influx of mad islamists and so on. But I guess what's advantageous for the Iraqi people didn't really play a role in the neocon's considerations.

Would he have been democratic? Surely not, but freedom isn't worth much in the anarchic chaos of a civil war.

[ April 08, 2005, 15:37: Message edited by: Ragusa ]