President Mugabe's speech at the UN - simply brilliant

[Khalil]

I always enjoy listening to Presindent Robert Mugabe.

Unlike other world leaders, Mugabe does not have somebody else writing his speeches. He simply speaks from his heart.

Enjoy ..

[utube]s61pL_mq8VU[/utube]

 

[Khalil]

Mugabe is the only African leader in Subsaharan africa who rejected the invitaion to celebrate Israel's 60th birthday

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Mugabe rejects Israels 60th birthday invitation

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All the leaders of Southern Africa accepted an invitation from the jewish state and joined Israel in celebrating it's 60th birthday. Nelson Mandela was in full praise of the jewish state and praised the country for it's achievments in hostile conditions.

The former president of South Africa, Mr Thabo Mbeki said that while he understood jewish fears in the Middle East, he could not support Israel for it's oppression of the Palestinian people.

The President of Zimbawe, President Robert Mugabe openly rejected the invitation. In his reply to the invitation he said "It is pretty much oblivious of my views on the issue of the significance of these celebrations, which in the light of the continued criminal occupation, has imposed extremely huge suffering on the Palestinians."

Reiterating ZANU/PF views, Mugabe contended that “Israel is and remains an apartheid state that pursues racists, oppressive and genocidal policies and practices towards the Palestinians in defiance of UN resolutions and international law, to cease the occupation, decolonise all Palestinian territories and allow for the peaceful coexistence of the Israeli and Palestinian people.”


Mugabe added that “contrary to its claims of commitment to ‘peace, prosperity and security’, together with Palestinian neighbours and the Arab states in the Middle East”, it was a “regional gendarme state” in the area, which “has harmonised its objectives to leading imperialist circles, to bring more wars, militarism, violence, torture and anti-democratic repression and whose actions are sanctioned and propped up by billions of military and other forms of aid from its US-led imperialist masters.”

The “so-called independence celebrations”, said Mugabe, were a serious indictment on Israel for the grave social, political and humanitarian consequences of the occupation.
They also marked “dispossession, colonialism and occupation enforced through criminal activities of murder, torture, banishment of millions of Palestinian refugees, settlements expansion and the creation of tiny Palestinian Bantustan prisons.

“To wine and dine with their Zionist occupiers will be tantamount to a serious betrayal of the people of Palestine to freedom and democratic equality to pursue a dignified life in conditions of total decolonisation and freedom. “In this regard, I openly reject this invitation and wish to reiterate my full solidarity and support of the right of the Palestinians to self-determination and an independent sovereign state.

 

[kingusama92]

This man owns when it comes to showing Israel that he doesn't give a damn.

 

[Sheikh]

Yeah, the man also owns when it comes to starving and killing his countrymen.

 

[kingusama92]

Yeah, the man also owns when it comes to starving and killing his countrymen.

No doubt on that either.

He's an idiot, but gotta love his rejection to Israel. Mugabe owns in almost anything that can help him gain power, money and some fame as well.

 

[Keith]

Good sentiment about Israel but it does not change the fact that Mugabe is a self centered self serving dictator git who cares less for his people than a black widow spider cares for her mate.

There was another world leader who could not stand the Jews and did unspeakable things to them as a nation. That did not make him a good leader or even a decent human being.

 

[OZGOD]

I don't know how any human being, whether they be black, white, green, blue, Christian, Muslim, Jew or whatever, can support a guy like this. He has completely destroyed his country's prospects and has guaranteed a life or misery for generations to come. At one point Zimbabwe was considered the breadbasket of Africa, but now it's just another failed state.

Just when you think this guy can't do any more to destroy his country he came up with something like this - not for the country, for for his birthday. $250,000 is an enormous fortune in Zimbabwe.

Mugabe hosts lavish party despite national crisis

CHINHOYI, Zimbabwe (CNN) -- Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was celebrating his 85th birthday with a lavish all-day party Saturday despite the fact that the country is gripped by an economic and health crisis.

President Robert Mugabe and his wife, Grace, attend a cake-cutting ceremony for his birthday Saturday.

Mugabe's ZANU-PF party said it raised at least $250,000 to hold the party in Mugabe's hometown of Chinhoyi, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) outside of the capital, Harare.

Critics of the president say the country is desperate for that amount of money to be spent instead on its citizens, who are suffering from a cholera outbreak, food shortages, and spiraling hyperinflation. On Friday, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai visited a hospital's closed intensive care unit that he said needed $30,000 to resume operating.

During the celebrations, Mugabe announced that his controversial land reform would not be reversed. The program is designed to have white-owned farms given to blacks, and there have been violent seizures of such farms since the program began in 2000.

He emphasized that the country's "indigenization program" -- which forces all major foreign companies operating in Zimbabwe to have at least 51 percent black ownership -- will be carried out. It began last year and hasn't been implemented yet.

Mugabe's birthday falls on February 21 but his party loyalists postponed the celebrations as they were raising money for the event.

"I think it is going to be a great day for the legend and icon whose birthday we are celebrating today here," said Mugabe's nephew Patrick Zhuwawo, one of the fund-raisers for the birthday. "The country might be having problems, but we need to have a day to honor the sacrifices the president has made for this country."

Zhuwawo said about 100 beasts would be slaughtered for the birthday bash.

Mugabe also invited schoolchildren from around the country to attend the party, being held at Chinhoyi University.

The farming town of Chinhoyi is usually quiet, but Saturday's event has changed everything. Cars with Mugabe's supporters could be seen hooting and some ZANU-PF supporters sang Mugabe's praises.

A banner in Chinhoyi read, "Age ain't nothing but a number."

Mugabe invited Tsvangirai, his new partner in a power-sharing government, but a Tsvangirai spokesman said the opposition party leader turned it down. He said it is political party function, with most of the attendees being ZANU-PF elite. As the prime minister, Tsvangirai is not obligated to attend, the spokesman said.

The spokesman would not acknowledge whether Tsvangirai had initially agreed to attend, but it was widely reported in Zimbabwean media that he had agreed to do so.

"Mr. Tsvangirai has other commitments, as far as I know," said Nelson Chamisa, a spokesman for Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change.

Tsvangirai last year said Mugabe's birthday party was "a gathering of the satisfied few." But at that point, he and the president were preparing to face off in a hotly contested presidential election.

As Saturday's celebrations began in a carnival atmosphere, just less than a kilometer (0.62 miles) away stood a deserted Chinhoyi government hospital -- a reflection of the country's dire health situation. A few nurses are attending to patients.

"There are no medicines. These patients have no option but to come here, but there is nothing we can do," said one nurse at the hospital.

On Friday Tsvangirai visited Harare Hospital, one of the country's biggest, and said its intensive care unit will need $30,000 in order to start operating again after a funding shortage.

Once a darling of Zimbabwe, Mugabe is blamed for driving the country into a meltdown.

A cholera epidemic that broke out in August has since hit every corner of the country, killing 3,731 people and infecting nearly 80,000, according to the World Health Organization, which quoted Zimbabwe's Ministry of Health.

The preventable disease has spread through Zimbabwe's 10 provinces through lack of access to clean water, faulty sewage systems, and uncollected refuse, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), which released a report this month on the outbreak.

The problems, MSF said, are "clear symptoms of the breakdown in infrastructure resulting from Zimbabwe's political and economic meltdown."

On Sunday, Tsvangirai appealed to the international community to help Zimbabwe's crippled economy, saying it would take $5 billion to stabilize the country.

The cholera outbreak has worsened Zimbabwe's economic crisis. Failed government policies and an acute food shortage because of years of poor agricultural production and widespread corruption have ravaged the currency of Zimbabwe, which has the world's highest inflation rate.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/02/28/zimbabwe.mugabe.birthday.party/index.html

Who cares about his rejection of Israel, or the US, or the UK, or the Wizard of OZ. Will that put food in the mouths of Zimbabwean children?

The worst thing is that nobody gives a shlt what's going on in Zimbabwe, just like they don't give a shlt what's happening in Darfur or other places in Africa - because there's no oil or anything of strategic interest. Nobody cared about the Rwandan genocide, nobody cares about the starvation in Sudan. But of course any Iraqi/Israeli/Palestinian death is highlighted because it's a BIG DEAL in world politics - the Arabs care, the Yanks care, the Poms care, the Muslims care, the Jews care, because it's a BIG DEAL to them. Nobody cares about these nobodies struggling to eke out a life in places like Zimbabwe, Sudan, the Congo, Haiti. These nations, and their people, are seen as irrelevancies in our world today. Nobody gives a shlt about them. Nobody.

 

[Khalil]

Why Mugabe is right ... and these are the facts

Since his party lost the referendum on the new constitution in February, President Robert Mugabe has been portrayed by the British government and media as a "man gone mad". But has he? For obvious reasons, Britain has deliberately confused the two issues of land reform and economic difficulties in Zimbabwe. Yet the two issues are distinctly separate. Mugabe may have ruined his economy (and voters may or may not punish him for it in the coming elections) but, as Baffour Ankomah reports, any suggestions that the land issue will go away when Mugabe goes away, is a dangerous fallacy that Britain and its supporters are putting in people's minds.

The land question is an emotional issue in both Zimbabwe and Britain. It has always been for 110 years. In fact, it goes back to 1889 when Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1902) who made a fortune in gold and diamond mining in that area of Africa, helped extend British imperial interests there. Rhodes set up his British South Africa Company (BSAC) in 1889 after signing the so-called Rudd Concession the year before with the Ndebele king, Lobengula. "What for Lobengula was seen only as an agreement for the company to mine gold was interpreted by Rhodes as virtually turning over sovereignty to the company," says the New African Yearbook, the sister publication of New African magazine. In 1890, Rhodes sent in an invading force of 200 white settlers and 500 armed men to take the territory. Calling themselves the Pioneer Column, they set up their capital at Salisbury (now Harare). Feeling hugely affronted, Lobengula went to war with the BSAC in 1893 and lost badly. As a result, he was made to forfeit his people's land. Three years later, the Ndebele were up in arms again, this time fighting together with their neighbours, the Shona, against the "foreigners" who had taken their land. This revolt, now called the first chimurenga (war of liberation ) by Zimbabwean patriots, was finally put down by Rhodes & Co in 1897, after much native blood had been shed (though few whites were killed). After that decisive victory, the settlers enacted a series of legal instruments to take more native land, ("grabbing" is the modern word for what they did). Interestingly, in the eyes of the British media, "grabbing" has today become President Mugabe's middle name.

In 1889, the Lippert Concession Act which preceded the actual occupation of Zimbabwe in 1890 encouraged the BSAC to buy concessions in Zimbabwe from the British government - the colonial overlord. The revenue was then repatriated to the British Treasury in London. The native population, the original owners of the land, got nothing!

In 1898, another act, The Native Reserves Order in Council created the infamous Native Reserves in which black people were shepherded into reserves (much like the Europeans did in America and Canada with the native Americans). But Zimbabwe's Native Reserves were set up haphazardly in often low potential areas which would later become the "communal areas" of today.

By 1914, white settlers who made up only 3% of the population controlled 75% of the economically productive land, while black Africans (97% of the population at the time) were forcefully confined to 23% of the land scattered into a number of Native Reserves.

In 1930, another legislation, The Land Apportionment Act, formalised the separation of land between blacks and whites. This Act was the result of the recommendations of the Morris Carter Commission of 1925.

Says the New African Yearbook: "The Land Apportionment Act of 1930 excluded Africans from that half of the country that contained the best farming land, despite the fact that Africans constituted over 95% of the population. This confinement to the poorest land accomplished the desired end of forcing Africans into the labour market.

"At the same time, the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1934 banned Africans from entering skilled employment. Thus Africans were forced to work for mere subsistence wages on white farms, mines and factories in virtual servitude. In this manner, the state, through the control of black labour, subsidised the growth of white agriculture, mining and industry."

The 1930 Act effectively handed the fertile, high rainfall areas of the country to whites. It divided the land as follows: Native Reserves 29 million acres; Native Purchase Areas 8 million acres; European Areas 49 million acres; Unassigned 6 million acres; Forest 3m acres. The population of the country at the time was: black Africans 1.1 million; whites 50,000.

In 1965, The Tribal Trust Lands Act changed the name of the Native Reserves to Tribal Trust Lands (TTLs) and created trustees for the land. By 1976, 4.5m blacks (seven-tenths of the population), forcibly removed from their traditional home areas, had been crowded into these infertile TTL lands. The overcrowding on the tribal lands naturally led to massive problems of land degradation, low productivity, over-stocking and over-grazing.

No wonder, the war of liberation, which saw Mugabe coming to power in 1980, was based on the land question. Zimbabwe covers 39m hectares of which 33m hectares are reserved for agriculture, and 6m for national parks and urban settlements.

At independence in 1980, almost 6,000 white commercial farmers owned 15.5m hectares (45% of the most productive land in the high rainfall regions where the potential for agriculture output is greatest). Small scale commercial farmers (8,500 mainly black farmers) controlled 5% of the land, in mostly drier regions; and 700,000 black farming families occupied the remaining 50% of the land (75% of which was in the low rainfall areas with very poor soil fertility).

At the independence negotiations in London (popularly called the Lancaster House Conference), Mugabe and his colleagues threatened to walk out over the land issue because they felt Britain was not giving the black population a fair deal.

The Conference resumed only when Britain and America made certain commitments to assist the Zimbabwean government to acquire land from white farmers for distribution to blacks.

Willing settlers, willing buyer

In reality, the Lancaster Conference did not resolve the land issue, it merely postponed it by inserting into the new constitution (which Mugabe recently tried, but failed, to change through the referendum), a provision requiring that land could only be acquired by the government on a "willing seller, willing buyer basis." And that provision could not be changed for 10 years!

It was a terrible provision - the sort that has kept much of the best traditional African lands all over that seaboard (from Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, Botswana, and Kenya) in minority white hands.

It meant that Mugabe's government could not acquire land "when" and "where" it wanted, because the white farmers were either unwilling to sell, or asked for higher prices. As a result between 1980 and 1990, the government acquired only 3.5 million hectares and resettled only 71,000 families out of a target of 162,000.

Today, Zimbabwe's population is officially put at 12 million - 98% is black, 0.8% (70,000) is white and the rest are Indian and mixed race. Yet, the land figures still read as follows:

- 1,000,000 black communal areas families are still farming the poorest lands (16.3m hectares in all) - each family sharing an average of 3 hectares.

- 4,000 large scale white commercial farmers (with an average of 2,000 hectares each) still dominate the scene (occupying 11.2m hectares), in a country where the single largest foreign exchange earner is agriculture.

- 10,000 small scale commercial farmers (mainly black) occupy 1.2m hectares.

- 70,000 black resettlement families own 2m hectares.

- State farming sector, 0.5m hectares.

When the 10-year "willing seller, willing buyer" mandatory period expired, Mugabe's government passed the Land Acquisition Act of 1991, which allowed for acquisition of land when and where the government required.

The Act was intended to speed up the land redistribution programme through land designation and compulsory land acquisition. But the government did not have the money to pay for the exercise. The British government, which had contributed £30m to the exercise (British papers are quoting £44m), withdrew its support claiming that Mugabe was giving the land to his "cronies and political allies".

Meanwhile, more and more white commercial farmers, with thousands of hectares of prime land to spare, diversified into horticulture, tobacco game ranching, tour and safari operations.

In a country where 70% of the population farm the poorest of soils, the sight of some of the most fertile lands lying fallow and being used by a tiny ethnic minority for game ranching and safari operations where foreign tourists pay money to go and watch animals, was a major political destabilising factor for Zimbabwe.

It would be a major destabilising factor for any country, even for Britain which is stridently against Mugabe's attempt to right this historic wrong. In no way will the people of Britain accept the control of nearly 50% of all land in the UK by an ethnic minority group which makes up less than 1% of the population! It would happen only over the dead bodies of the British!

Thus, natural justice demanded that Mugabe's government did something about the land issue - 20 years after independence!

In November 1997, Mugabe's government, smarting under political pressure from the black population, was moved to act by announcing that land would be acquired compulsorily for redistribution.

Even here, it was made abundantly clear that: "It is not the intention of the government to drive commercial farmers off the land... No farmer will be without land in Zimbabwe. Even those farmers whose properties are designated by reason of their proximity to communal areas will still be invited to select from other properties elsewhere," the government said in an official statement in December 1997.

House of Lords landlords

In sum, the following types of land were earmarked for acquisition:

- Derelict land or under-utilised land, ie, land undeveloped by farmers and lying fallow. For example, if a white farmer has 2,000 hectares and is only actively farming 1,000 hectares, the 1,000 lying fallow will be acquired by the government.

- Land owned by absentee or foreign landlords (mainly British, some of whom are former and current members of the House of Lords in London).

- Land owned by farmers with more than one farm.

- Land contiguous on communal areas.

In fact, before any action was taken, the government called an international conference on land reform and resettlement in Harare, from 9-11 September 1998.

The objective was to inform and involve the donor community in the land resettlement programme. Forty-eight countries and international organisations attended the conference, at the end of which the donor community unanimously endorsed the need for land reform in Zimbabwe. This was essential for poverty reduction, economic growth and political stability, the donors said.

On 6 February this year, before Britain took a nationalistic position in favour of the Zimbabwean white farmers (20,000 of whom are of British ancestry and have been promised evacuation by London), Joseph Msika, chairman of the land reform and resettlement committee in Zimbabwe, repeated in an official statement: "Government would like to assure all concerned that the land reform and resettlement programme would be carried out in a transparent and peaceful manner and in accordance with the laws of Zimbabwe."

In all the heat spewed over Zimbabwe by the British government and media, the following basic facts have conveniently been ignored:

- By July 1998, Mugabe's government had bought 3.5 million hectares for resettlement purposes, and compensation had been paid. Not a single piece of land had been seized without compensation.

- The oft-repeated fact that Zimbabwe is heavily dependent on the output of white farmers, is balanced by the equally important fact that black small-scale farmers now produce 70% of the country's maize, cotton and groundnut output. In 1986, the country's small-scale farmers were awarded the Freedom and Hunger Prize for their efforts.

- Mugabe is accused of giving land to his "cronies and political allies", but the Zimbabwean high commission in London tells New African: "The position is that state land can be leased by anyone and that there are white farmers who are also leasing state land."

- Studies conducted by the World Bank have shown that large-scale commercial farmers have utilised less than half of the 11.2m hectares of land owned by them. The rest lies fallow.

- That, some white farmers have two, three, four or five farms. "There is one farmer with 10 farms. And another with 18 farms," says the Zimbabwe high commission in London.

"No mention [has been made] of the damage to the environment as a result of overcrowding on poor lands," adds the high commission. "No mention of the increasing population drift into urban areas. No mention of the fact that commercial farmers have moved into tobacco, horticulture and game ranching."

Last year, the Commercial Farmers Union freely offered some 1.5m hectares for resettlement. The government estimates that it would need US$1.1 billion for the land reform process - to cover land acquisition, land development, infrastructure and services such as roads, water supply, first crop tillage, schools, clinics etc, and farmer support and credit.

In early April, the Zimbabwe parliament went ahead and passed an amended constitutional provision authorising the government to acquire land for redistribution without paying compensation. The provision envisaged compensation to be paid by Britain (which pocketed the revenue from the land acquisition by Rhodes' BSAC in the 1890s), but London has said it won't pay any compensation.

As the situation has fast deteriorated into nationalistic (some say racial) positions, and more white farms have been "invaded" by blacks (usually singing and dancing as they move into the farms), America has suspended assistance to Zimbabwe's land reform programme. Not that it matters - despite promising 20 years ago to help, America has so far contributed only $1m to land reform in Zimbabwe. At the time of going to press, the European Union was expected to announce its own measures against Zimbabwe, and Nigeria's president, Olusegun Obasanjo, was trying to mediate between Harare and London.

All said, the International Herald Tribune, (in a report on 28 March 2000) appears to see what Britain and its supporters pretend not to see: "In a country where farming is the single largest generator of foreign exchange," the American newspaper said, "nearly a third of [Zimbabwe's] most productive farmland remains in the hands of 4,500 white farmers, and almost half of all land is owned by the country's 70,000 whites. Racial economic inequities persist despite Zimbabwe's transition to majority rule."

This is what Mugabe wants changed. It behoves Britain, a nation that prides itself of its love for democracy and natural justice, to meet Mugabe half way and find a just and amicable way of resolving the issue than the current blind nationalism marching forth from London. Most Africans find it obscene!

 

[Keith]

Now post the rest of the truth as well please.

 

[Random Aussie]

Now post the rest of the truth as well please.

Heh not much chance of that Keith.

 

[Keith]

The brutal tyranny of President Robert Mugabe has practically destroyed Zimbabwe. Consider these statistics from that central African country: eighty percent unemployment; an inflation rate of 1050%; an estimated 29% of sexually active persons are positive for HIV; and a life expectancy that was 62 in 1990 has plummeted to 37 for men and 34 for women in 2004. This disaster is entirely man-made, specifically the results of the Mugabe regime. He has destroyed the economy and made it extremely dangerous for any opposition to his rule. It is a human disaster on scale with or surpassing Iraq and Dafur yet receives very little attention.

Suffer the little children is a phrase never far from your mind in today’s Zimbabwe. The horde of painfully thin street children milling around you at traffic lights is almost the least of it: in a population now down to 11m or less there are an estimated 1.3m orphans.

Go to one of the overflowing cemeteries in Bulawayo or Beit Bridge and you are struck by the long lines of tiny graves for babies and toddlers.

A game ranger friend tells me that hyena attacks on humans, previously unheard of, have become increasingly common. “So many babies, not all of them dead, are being dumped in the bush that hyenas have developed a taste for human flesh,” he explains.

Under the weight of the general economic meltdown — the economy has shrunk by 40% since 2000 and is still contracting — the health system has collapsed and a populace now weakened by five consecutive years of near-starvation dies of things which would never have been fatal before. A staggering 42,000 women died in childbirth last year, for example, compared with fewer than 1,000 a decade ago.

A vast human cull is under way in Zimbabwe and the great majority of deaths are a direct result of deliberate government policies. Ignored by the United Nations, it is a genocide perhaps 10 times greater than Darfur’s and more than twice as large as Rwanda’s.

Genocide is not a word one should use hastily but the situation is exactly as described in the UN Convention on Genocide, which defines it as “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.

Reckoning the death toll is difficult. Had demographic growth continued normally, Zimbabwe’s population would have passed 15m by 2000 and 18m by the end of 2006. But people have fled the country in enormous numbers, with 3m heading for South Africa and an estimated further 1m scattered around the world. This would suggest a current population of 14m. But even the government, which tries to make light of the issue, says that there are only 12m left in Zimbabwe.

Social scientists say that the government’s figures are clearly rigged and too high. Their own population estimates vary between 8m and 11m. But even if one accepted the government figure, 2m people are “missing”, and the real number is probably 3m or more. And all this is happening in what was, until recently, one of Africa’s most prosperous states and a member of the Commonwealth.

 

[Keith]

Like every black Zimbabwean I met, Makoni would like to leave the country but is in effect trapped by her own poverty and weakness. Despite the horrendous death toll, Archbishop Ncube is right. This is not a genocide like that in Rwanda, where some 900,000 people were butchered in an orgy of tribal hatred. Instead, the regime’s key motive at every stage has simply been its own maintenance of power.

From 2000 on, it destroyed commercial agriculture because it saw the white farmers and their workers as opposition to Mugabe. This led to the first wave of killing, as some 2.25m farm-workers and their families were thrown off the farms, many after being beaten and tortured. An unknown number died. The eviction had the effect of collapsing the economy and cutting the food supply far below subsistence in every subsequent year.

What scarce food there was left, along with seeds, fertiliser, agricultural implements and every other means to life, was made dependent on possession of a Zanu-PF party card. Campaigns of terror followed in 2000 and 2002-03. The population has since been kept in a continuous state of anxiety by a series of military-style “operations”, of which Murambatsvina and Maguta are merely two particularly murderous examples.

Even Operation Sunrise — introducing a new currency last July — had its casualties: many rural folk who failed to surrender their old notes in time had their small savings wiped out.

“These operations remind the population who’s boss,” a Catholic priest told me. “They remind people that they are subjects, not citizens. They keep them off balance, terrified and compliant. “Believe me, Mugabe would win any election he called in these conditions.

Of course, the regime knows it’s hated, that it would never survive a genuinely free election, so it practises continuous and overwhelming intimidation.” All these factors interact.

Some 29% of sexually active Zimbabweans are reckoned to be HIV-positive and the economic collapse has devastated the health system and stopped the distribution of anti-Aids drugs. Studies show that HIV-sufferers with severe malnutrition are six times more likely to die than those who are properly fed and have access to proper medication.

The Murambatsvina and Maguta campaigns — sharply increasing stress and malnutrition — would be large killers, even if people did not die first of exposure or starvation. As it is, with the Murambatsvina affecting 2m people, the resulting death rate may be somewhere between the 50% reported in Bulawayo and 25% in Harare.

Murambatsvina was also about staying in power: Mugabe realised that urban shanty-dwellers were becoming restless and decided on a pre-emptive strike against them. The political toll, plus Aids, in turn, have had a ruinous effect on the rural economy, robbing it of productive labour and thus dramatically reducing food security. The government ignores all this, blames it on Tony Blair or flails against reality with the economics of the madhouse.

Gideon Gono, governor of the central bank, orders in the Green Bombers (young Zanu-PF thugs) to enforce his diktat and bakers are jailed for exceeding the subeconomic bread price set by government. In this — as in the programme for forced re-ruralisation — there are reminders of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge.

World Health Organisation figures show that life expectancy in Zimbabwe, which was 62 in 1990, had by 2004 plummeted to 37 for men and 34 for women. These are by far the worst such figures in the world. Yet Zimbabwe does not even get onto the UN agenda: South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, who has covered for Mugabe from the beginning, uses his leverage to prevent discussion. How long this can go on is anyone’s guess.

After Rwanda, the UN vowed “never again” but Mugabe — and, to a considerable extent, Mbeki — have already been responsible for far more deaths than Rwanda suffered and the number is fast heading into realms previously explored only by Stalin, Mao and Adolf Eichmann.

 

[Khalil]

Today, Europeans own almost all the land in the Americas, almost all the good land in Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania, and most of the best land in many African countries like South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Kenya. To acquire this land outside Europe, Europeans did not use law, justice or money.

They took it with the gun.

But the West does not want Africans to mention either this fact, or the fact that white people are wrong in wanting to own all the land and everything else in Africa.

And the West is the champion of free speech in the world!

When Africans in Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe and elsewhere fought for their independence, it meant two things to them - land and freedom. But when Europe conceded independence to African countries it was self-rule without land and freedom.

And so most Africans continue to be landless while Europeans continue to own millions and millions of hectares of the best land in Africa.

In Kenya, 10 percent of the population, both black and white farmers, owns 73 percent of all arable land. In South Africa, 16 percent of the population, made up of whites, owns 87 percent of all arable land. And in Zimbabwe, 4,500 white farmers - or a mere .03 percent of a population of 13 million Africans - own 12 million hectares or 73 percent of all arable land.

The African majority in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya live under this situation not because they like it or because it is right, moral, fair or just, but only because they are powerless to change it.

There can be no greater proof of lack of independence for, say, Zimbabwe, than this situation where a mere .03 percent is allowed to own 73 percent of all arable land, totally control the nation's agriculture, and own half the country's economy.

Mugabe is a great freedom fighter who fought for the independence of his country but at the behest of the West turned his back on socialism and stayed too long in power. At last, Mugabe has realised that he too is a victim of neo-colonialism and has decided not just to say "no" to the West but to redistribute land in his own country.

Whatever Mugabe's past mistakes, we must agree that on this one question of finally redistributing African land to African people, he is 100 percent right. Mugabe's only fault is that he took too long to do it.

But now that he is finally doing it, all people who believe in fairness and justice must support him.

From what one hears from CNN, BBC and other Western news media, the West stands as one against Mugabe. They accuse him of violating the spirit of reconciliation, and perpetrating racism against white people in Zimbabwe.

Rather than prove anything against Mugabe, the West's accusations only prove how little it thinks of Africans' right to own anything or have meaningful independence.

Could one even imagine a situation in which 4,500 Zimbabwean Africans were allowed to own 12 million hectares of land in Britain, France or any other country in Europe?

The West also accuses Mugabe of violating the spirit of reconciliation between white colonisers and black colonised that was agreed upon at the time of independence. But did this reconciliation mean that colonisers would continue to own everything they had grabbed before independence, and that the Africans who had been robbed of everything would continue to own nothing?

Finally, the very West that is restoring all the money, properties and works of art that it stole from the Jewish people and paying reparations for all the slave labour Jewish people did during the Second World War, is asking that colonial white farmers be paid compensation by Africans.

The British government admits that at the time of independence it made a promise which it never kept, to provide the money necessary to buy out the white farmers. Now it claims that the reason for its failure to keep its own promise is Mugabe's mismanagement of Zimbabwean economy. But the real reason is the British desire that the Zimbabwean and African economies be controlled by British companies and British citizens. What then must Africans do? Starve to death until the British agree to keep their promises?

I am truly surprised at the clamour that I hear for British farmers to be compensated for any loss of land in Zimbabwe. Between Africans who have been working for starvation wages on white farms and white farmers who have made millions of pounds out of their colonial ownership of land in Zimbabwe, it is the white farmers who should compensate Africans.

Africans are entitled to recover their stolen lands from white farmers. And the West has a moral duty to pay not just compensation to white farmers who will lose land, but to pay reparations to Africans now for all the millions of people they killed and kidnapped from Africa during the slave trade. What is good for the Jewish goose is good for the African gander.

Rule of law must mean rule of just law. Sooner or later, colonial wrongs must be corrected all over Africa. And they will not be corrected by substituting white robbers with black robbers. Colonial injustice will be corrected by giving land and freedom not only to Africans in power and government, but to all the people to whom God gave land.

Whether leaders like Moi like it or not, today it is Zimbabwe, tomorrow it will be Kenya, the day after it will be South Africa, and after that it will be the entire continent. The river of freedom and justice is unstoppable.

If white and black people of Africa are to live peacefully in future, the West must stop imposing white people as saviours of black people using arguments that in effect paint white citizens of Africa as either more able technically or less corrupt morally.

Going by the opposition from the West, Mugabe may not survive this war against neo-colonialism. But he is right, and he is bearing the standard for all Africans. Should he fall, other Africans must take up the mantle and fight on to victory.

 

[Keith]

Mugabe is a great freedom fighter who fought for the independence of his country but at the behest of the West turned his back on socialism and stayed too long in power. At last, Mugabe has realised that he too is a victim of neo-colonialism and has decided not just to say "no" to the West but to redistribute land in his own country.

Whatever Mugabe's past mistakes, we must agree that on this one question of finally redistributing African land to African people, he is 100 percent right. Mugabe's only fault is that he took too long to do it.

But now that he is finally doing it, all people who believe in fairness and justice must support him.

1. Was a great freedom fighter, no doubts about that. No doubt too that he became 1 of the worst dictators this continent has ever seen - wanting only to secure his power and fill up his personal coffers. He has become the victim of his own greed.

2. The land should belong to anyone that has aquired it legally, regardless of colour / ethnic background. I have njo problem with land being reverted back to its original owners (communities) as long as it is done in a manner in which the land can be utilised effectively (provide training and financial support to potential commercial farmers etc). His landgrab policy has directly led to the Zimbabwe collapsing to the brink of total self destruction. The majority of those farms seized were "given" to people that had no clue how to farm effectively hence no more food for their own people.

3. Your last part above (quoted section) is just plain ******** and crap.

 

[Random Aussie]

Well you find all types in here but didn't expect a Mugabe fan.

I myself prefer Idi Amin, although Pol Pot had some nice moments.

 

[Poison]

Dude, how can you support Mugabe?

Are you that blinded?

He has DESTROYED his country.

 

[Keith]

Well you find all types in here but didn't expect a Mugabe fan.

I myself prefer Idi Amin, although Pol Pot had some nice moments.

 

[adwords]

Zimbabwe remains on the ICC board only because of support of Afro-Asia bloc of South Africa, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh
Other white bloc oppose to it is England, Australia, NZ

no wonder we are seeing the same arguments over here

 

[Keith]

Zimbabwe remains on the ICC board only because of support of Afro-Asia bloc of South Africa, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh
Other white bloc oppose to it is England, Australia, NZ

no wonder we are seeing the same arguments over here

I am a south african and I oppose Mugabe. Poison is from? Kinda blows that argument way out of the water does it not?

 

[OZGOD]

Some people will support Mugabe, no matter how he has destroyed his country's economic health and well being, because:

1. he stood up to the evil white colonialists

2. he stood up to Israel

Because of these two things, the fact that he has given most of his countrymen a death sentence by destroying his country's viability is overlooked. Who cares if his policies brought poverty and destitution to Zimbabwe? He stood up to white people and Jews!

 

[Poison]

I am a south african and I oppose Mugabe. Poison is from? Kinda blows that argument way out of the water does it not?

Pakistani based in Australia mate

And I strongly doubt the Asian bloc of cricket supports Zimbabwe due to relations with Mugabe.

 

[Gabbar Singh]

Its ironic that the OP who spends time on here highlighting, and rightly so, human right abuses by the Israeli regime yet on this thread we see him actually support and praise a mass murderer.

Ahh don't you just love hypocrisy.

 

[Khalil]

Some people will support Mugabe, no matter how he has destroyed his country's economic health and well being, because:

1. he stood up to the evil white colonialists

2. he stood up to Israel

Because of these two things, the fact that he has given most of his countrymen a death sentence by destroying his country's viability is overlooked. Who cares if his policies brought poverty and destitution to Zimbabwe? He stood up to white people and Jews!

In the 70's when most of Southern Africa were colonies of western countries. The Soviet Union was assisting the liberation movements of those countries in liberating themselves.

Mozambique and Angola achieved their independence and turned to communist rule. The British were afraid of Zimbawe becoming and another communist country and decided that Ian Smith step down and hand on Zimbabwe to the black majority.

They backed Mugabe because Mugabe schooled and graduated in the UK. Mugabe was highly westernised and a capitalist. The British saw him as 'our' man. They even got the queen to knight him.

In 1979 Mugabe, white farmers and members of the British government met in the UK and the 'Lancaster house agrreement' was reached. In this agreement the British government promised to buy 18% of 'white land' and redribute this land to black farmers. Black leaders to the left saw Mugabe as a traitor who sold out the the British.

So where did it all go wrong?

20 years after the Lancaster house agreement and the British did not honour the Lancaster house agreement. Magarat Thatcher was replaced by John Major in 1990. The first thing he did was to send Mugabe 3 Rolls Royces. Mugabe returned these cars. He wanted land. During this time the soviet union collapsed and communism was no longer a threat to England, England was no longer intetested in Mugabe.

In 1993 Mugabe informed John Major that if the British did not honour the Lancaster agreement than he has no choice but to forcefully 'grab farms'.
John Major ignored him and 'land grabbing' took place. The English than declared Mugabe as a 'terrorist' and the imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe and they got every western nation to do the same.

Mugabe did not destroy Zimbabwe. The English and the rest of the western world did by imposing unjustified sanctions which totally destroyed Zimbabwes economy.

 

[Random Aussie]

Mugabe did not destroy Zimbabwe. The English and the rest of the western world did by imposing unjustified sanctions which totally destroyed Zimbabwes economy.

Mate, with respect, this is complete and utter rubbish. You are just repeating the Mugabe propaganda he uses to remain in power.

You on his payroll?

 

[Khalil]

Lancaster House agreement - Summary

Lord Carrington, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom, chaired the Conference. The conference took place from 10 September-15 December 1979 with 47 plenary sessions.

In the course of its proceedings the conference reached agreement on the following issues:

Summary of the Independence Constitution
arrangements for the pre-independence period
a cease-fire agreement signed by the parties
In concluding this agreement and signing this report the parties undertook:

to accept the authority of the Governor;
to abide by the Independence Constitution;
to comply with the pre-independence arrangements;
to abide by the cease-fire agreement;
to campaign peacefully and without intimidation;
to renounce the use of force for political ends;
to accept the outcome of the elections and instruct any forces under their authority to do the same.
Under the Independence Constitution, 20% of seats in the country's parliament were reserved for whites.

The three-month long conference almost failed to reach an accord due to disagreements on land reform. Mugabe was pressured to sign and land was the key stumbling block. Both the British and American governments offered to buy land from willing white settlers who could not accept reconciliation (the "Willing buyer, Willing seller" principle) and a fund was to be established, to operate from 1980 to 1990.


At that conference, more than £630 million of aid was pledged to buy land but the only land that was sold 20,000 km² of waste land for 30 million dollars

 

[Keith]

Mugabe was losing control of his powerbase. He needed to something to strengthen his support again. Hence land grabs. Hence elected in the next election. Always done around election times.

 

[Khalil]

Mugabe was losing control of his powerbase. He needed to something to strengthen his support again. Hence land grabs. Hence elected in the next election. Always done around election times.

I am surprised that you so blindly fail to see that Zimbabwe's problems started when the British government failed to honour the Lancaster agreement.

 

[Keith]

I am surprised that you so blindly fail to see that Zimbabwe's problems started when the British government failed to honour the Lancaster agreement.

And I am surprised that you so blindly support a dictator and a killer of his own people.

With regards the Lancaster Agreement - Yes it was not honoured, not exactly the farmers fault though.

I stick to the opinion that any land that is appropriated needs to be done wisely. The way Mugabe went about it was shocking. Take the land that has been profitable for years from commercial farmers that know what they are doing and give it to ex soldiers and supporters of Mugabe who have no idea how to farm commercially (*). A few years down the line and the country cannot feed itself precisely because of the landgrabs. Yes, the land issues have to be addressed, of that there is no doubt whatsoever BUT it must be done correctly. Give the new "owners" proper training and fund them accordingly. If they cannot operate the farm correctly within a specified period, then take the land back and make it viable again.

In SA we have taken land from certain individuals (commercial famers) and passed them onto "new" farmers. These farmers are provided with the relevant training and funding to ensure that the venture is a success. If the farm does not show a profit in a specified time frame the land is removed from those people.


(*) Commercial farming is a highly professional and mechanised affair, it is not subsistence farming, which is quite easy.

 

[161]

I don't know how any human being, whether they be black, white, green, blue, Christian, Muslim, Jew or whatever, can support a guy like this. He has completely destroyed his country's prospects and has guaranteed a life or misery for generations to come. At one point Zimbabwe was considered the breadbasket of Africa, but now it's just another failed state.

Just when you think this guy can't do any more to destroy his country he came up with something like this - not for the country, for for his birthday. $250,000 is an enormous fortune in Zimbabwe.



Who cares about his rejection of Israel, or the US, or the UK, or the Wizard of OZ. Will that put food in the mouths of Zimbabwean children?

The worst thing is that nobody gives a shlt what's going on in Zimbabwe, just like they don't give a shlt what's happening in Darfur or other places in Africa - because there's no oil or anything of strategic interest. Nobody cared about the Rwandan genocide, nobody cares about the starvation in Sudan. But of course any Iraqi/Israeli/Palestinian death is highlighted because it's a BIG DEAL in world politics - the Arabs care, the Yanks care, the Poms care, the Muslims care, the Jews care, because it's a BIG DEAL to them. Nobody cares about these nobodies struggling to eke out a life in places like Zimbabwe, Sudan, the Congo, Haiti. These nations, and their people, are seen as irrelevancies in our world today. Nobody gives a shlt about them. Nobody.

Khalil and people like him are a bunch of brainwashed donkeys who are willing to support any dictatorial thug from Mugabe to Ahmedinijad as long as they throw out a few lines against Israel.

Sad .. childish and stupid thinking.

 

[161]

This also gives an explanation as to why so many Muslim countries are run by dictators/monarchies .. as long as they keep the populations completely occupied hating Israel or the West .. no one will rise up and challenge them.

 

[Ghoshtbuster]

Firstly, havent listened to the speech in the OP - no doubt its crap though.

Secondly, Ahmedinejad in the same sentence as Mugabe? LOL Fox News much?

 

[Khalil]

Mate, with respect, this is complete and utter rubbish. You are just repeating the Mugabe propaganda he uses to remain in power.

You on his payroll?

I am not on Mugabes's payroll. Even if I was there is not much I could do with $100.

I lived in Zimbabwwe for 4 years before being transferred to Cape Town. You guys just don't know the truth about Zimbabwe. The only thing you guys know about Zimbabwe is the lies being dished out by the BBC and CNN .

Mugabe had no choice but to expropriate white owned land after the British government failed to honour the Lancaster House agreement. Mugabe waited patiently for 20 years.

It is British and Western sanctions that has destroyed the economy of Zimbabwe and not Mugabe's government.

 

[Keith]

Harare — Corruption has now been officially acknowledged as one of the greatest cancers abetting Zimbabwe's sharp economic decline.

At the ruling ZANU-PF party's Extraordinary Congress last week, Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono named it as one of several factors responsible for the nation's economic woes.

Analysts say, however, that in spite of this official recognition of the problem, the government is not expected to try to stem the scourge of corruption as so many officials are themselves involved.

At the congress, which ran from December 11 to 14, Gono said there were "cash barons" in the ruling party and government who were keeping huge quantities of money for speculative purposes and trade in the illegal foreign currency market.

Zimbabwe has been in the grip of a serious currency shortage which has seen people spending days queuing outside banking halls to withdraw their salaries. This has badly affected production as man hours are wasted while people move from bank to bank in search of cash.

The official exchange rate is 285,000 Zimbabwe dollars to one US dollar. On the parallel market, one US dollar fetches 1.6 million ZWD.

Opposition parties and business have in the past accused the central bank of stoking the country's inflation of over 8,000 per cent by printing paper money and introducing other quasi-fiscal activities into the economy.

This week, the central bank was expected to introduce new currency to ease the cash shortage.

Gono revealed at the ZANU-PF congress that while the central bank had injected 67 trillion ZWD into the market, only 2 trillion ZWD could be accounted for by the close of business last week.

"Our question is: who has all the other money? That is also the reason the central bank has taken its time to respond to the cash crisis," said Gono. "We cannot keep on printing money before we account for the other 65 trillion ZWD.

"Corruption, corruption, corruption has destroyed this country," Gono told last week's congress, which was also addressed by President Robert Mugabe among other senior government officials.

Analysts said the official would not have made such a bold claim without the knowledge and tacit approval of the president.

However, his claim is contrary to the official party line, which blames most of the nation's economic woes on western sanctions imposed on Mugabe and his top officials, and on this year's drought.

Gono's claim was along the same line as that taken by the country's corruption watchdog, Transparency International Zimbabwe - which has also blamed the nation's problems on misconduct, as well as Mugabe's intricate patronage system.

Last year, Industry and International Trade Minister Obert Mpofu told a parliamentary committee that senior government and party officials were deeply involved in the wholesale looting of resources at the Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company.

While he later retracted the claim, some thought that this was done under pressure.

Mpofu was charged with perjury for lying to parliament - a charge likely to fall away after parliament is dissolved to make way for the harmonised presidential, parliamentary and local government elections scheduled for March.

A number of party and government officials have been implicated in the smuggling of precious minerals since the discovery last year of diamonds in the Chiadzwa district of Manicaland Province.

While Mugabe had warned that corruption would not be tolerated, neither he nor anyone else has dared name names.

Last week, Gono said an average of 15 tonnes of gold worth 400 million dollars was smuggled out of Zimbabwe every year.

"Diamonds worth over 800 million dollars have been smuggled out of the country," he said. "Other minerals have either been smuggled or under-invoiced to the tune of about 200 million dollars per year.

"In total, therefore this economy is losing on average not less than 1,7 billion dollars per year through economic sabotage perpetrated by a few of us with the knowledge and/or complicity of many seated in this hall," he said to deafening applause from the public gallery.

"We are now aware of the massive syndicates of cash barons who are hoarding cash and consequently creating shortages."

However, Gono immediately beat a retreat.

"I will not disclose what we are going to do and we want to see the congress express itself on what is causing the shortages," he warned darkly.

His challenge was immediately taken up by Mashonaland East provincial chairman Ray Kaukonde, who called on Gono to produce this list of cash barons.

Kaukonde then asked the question on everybody's lips, "On behalf of provinces, I would want to ask what it is that is causing these people not to be arrested?"

Gono said by speaking his mind, he was making many enemies for himself. "I will be the focal point of attack and worse smear campaigns than ever before," he said.

A senior official with Transparency International said he was sceptical that any action would be taken by the authorities.

"Gono is saying all the right things. Unfortunately, corruption thrives in ZANU-PF and government itself," he said.

A political analyst at the University of Zimbabwe said that nothing would come of Gono's self-righteous protests and that ZANU-PF was well known for protecting its own.

"We have become hostage to the culture of secrecy," said the analyst. "Nobody wants to name and shame because none of them is clean. Not even the president seems to have the courage to name corrupt officials in his administration.

"The same people accused of hoarding cash have been implicated in black-market foreign currency deals, the illegal sale of state-subsidised fuel, fertiliser, maize seed and other farm inputs.

"It is the same people implicated in the smuggling of precious minerals. Once in while there are token arrests but the real culprits are beyond the reach of the law.

"Corruption has become a cancer in Zimbabwean society, and unfortunately the pain is felt mostly by you and me - the poor."

Meshack Ndodana is the pseudonym of an IWPR journalist in Zimbabwe.

 

[Keith]

September 3, 2008

By Tendai Dumbutshena

ROBERT Mugabe gets visibly agitated and froths at the mouth when he talks about the need to safeguard Zimbabwe’s sovereignty. He of course is the chief custodian of a sovereignty he deems sacrosanct and inviolable.

His political opponents, nay enemies, undermine Zimbabwe’s sovereignty by colluding with imperialist powers to effect regime change. These foreign powers want to seize control of Zimbabwe’s abundant natural resources.

It is a tragic irony that no one has undermined Zimbabwe’s sovereignty more than Mugabe and his government. Nothing undermines a nation’s sovereignty more than economic dependence on foreign powers or interests. Reckless policies pursued to perpetuate Mugabe’s rule have impoverished Zimbabwe to an extent unimaginable in the early years of the country’s independence. The country then was classified as a medium-income developing country with a functional and viable economy. Now it has been reduced to a ramshackle economy which can only be revived through foreign assistance.

Mugabe may rant and rave against Western countries as much as he likes, the unpalatable truth is that they will pick up the tab for Zimbabwe’s economic recovery. The country has been so degraded and devalued it simply lacks the capacity to arrest the decline and reverse it.

The national currency – that symbol of a nation’s pride and sovereignty – has been reduced to worthlessness. While Mugabe childishly attacks America’s President George Bush the United States dollar is increasingly becoming Zimbabwe’s de facto currency. Most goods and services of value can now only be purchased with the greenback. It is illegal to do so but the government is unable to enforce the law. It cannot enforce this law because it is precisely black market activity that is now driving the economy.

Laws governing economic activity are now more honoured in their breach than observance. In fact, the government, mainly through the Reserve Bank, is the chief violator of the country’s currency laws. It has in its employ an army of shady foreign currency dealers who frequently raid the black market. That is the only way it can source sufficient foreign currency to pay its bills. This is evidence that the formal sector has collapsed. It cannot even supply the country with sufficient local currency which is painfully rationed to a desperate population.

The sad reality is that financial transactions that keep the country limping along are done on the streets and in the privacy of homes and offices. The authorities realize that these strictly illegal deals keep Zimbabwe going. If you cannot beat them join them. This is the motto guiding Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono who has become the biggest player on the currency black market.

Even sadder is the dependence of the country on foreign food aid. A country that in the 1980s was lauded as a bread-basket of the region has been reduced to the status of a beggar. It is a frightening thought that had there been no food aid forthcoming after the agricultural sector was decimated by a reckless land grab, a famine of Ethiopian proportions would have stalked the land. The citizens of a country that once produced food in abundance are now dying of malnutrition. Some are forced to eat wild fruit like wild animals, sometimes with fatal consequences. They have lost their dignity. While Mugabe talks endlessly of sovereignty the people of Zimbabwe cannot stand tall as a proud and sovereign people.

The tragedy does not end there. Every sector of the economy has been destroyed by a government solely concerned with its own survival. The manufacturing sector only operates at 20 percent of its capacity. Mining and tourism have also been hard hit by government policies that fly in the face of economic common sense. A chronic shortage of goods has devastated the retail sector. The black market is now a more reliable source of goods. Economics is the science of the production and distribution of goods and services.

The formal economic sector in Zimbabwe no longer efficiently produces and distributes goods and services. It has been supplanted by an economy driven by black market merchants and crooks. This economic disaster translates into human suffering. Unemployment, poverty, hunger and disease are now the lot of most Zimbabweans.

When Mugabe came into power in 1980 he inherited a country in reasonable economic shape.

The late president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere is reported to have said to Mugabe: “You have inherited a jewel. Do not destroy it.”

Well, destroy it Mugabe certainly has. The Rhodesia which Mugabe inherited from Ian Smith had been subjected to 15 years of comprehensive economic sanctions. It also diverted resources to fight a war. Yet it had a functional economy.

When the Mugabe era finally ends whoever takes over will need a massive injection of foreign currency to kick-start the economy. No money is given without conditions. A dependence on foreign funding leads to an erosion of sovereignty. In the early 1990s when the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) was forced on Zimbabwe by the IMF and World Bank, policy was dictated to government by the lenders. When working on a national budget priorities are determined by foreigners. Short of direct rule there cannot be a greater loss of sovereignty than this.

Zimbabwe’s hopeless economic situation makes it inevitable that a post-Mugabe government will operate within a straitjacket of donor-imposed economic policies. The whole notion of self-government will be thrown out of the window as bureaucrats from Washington and elsewhere call the shots. Mugabe sacrificed the economy to prolong his rule.

In so doing he has effectively compromised the sovereignty that he continuously harps about. It is he, not his so called western enemies, who has delivered Zimbabwe to the neo-liberal policies of the West.

 

[Random Aussie]

I am not on Mugabes's payroll. Even if I was there is not much I could do with $100.

I lived in Zimbabwwe for 4 years before being transferred to Cape Town. You guys just don't know the truth about Zimbabwe. The only thing you guys know about Zimbabwe is the lies being dished out by the BBC and CNN .

Mugabe had no choice but to expropriate white owned land after the British government failed to honour the Lancaster House agreement. Mugabe waited patiently for 20 years.

It is British and Western sanctions that has destroyed the economy of Zimbabwe and not Mugabe's government.

*shrugs*

If you believe Mugabe over the Western media that is your problem not mine.

 

[deathstreak]

Well you find all types in here but didn't expect a Mugabe fan.

I myself prefer Idi Amin, although Pol Pot had some nice moments.

) )

on the other hand Land Grabbing agreement not honoured being by the British cannot alone send the country into the spiral which Zimbabwe has gone into.

The sanctions hurt Zimbabwe because they were dependent on other countries for survival once the farms collapsed.

Having land means nothing without the ability to use it

 

[observer1]

) )

on the other hand Land Grabbing agreement not honoured being by the British cannot alone send the country into the spiral which Zimbabwe has gone into.

The sanctions hurt Zimbabwe because they were dependent on other countries for survival once the farms collapsed.

Having land means nothing without the ability to use it

Sanctions will destroy any country eventually.

Trade is essential for some.

Look at the state of Afghanistan and Iraq Pre-Invasion. Civillians would die out of starvation due due lack of Economical and Medical supplies, not to mention low food.

Imagine if Britain was placed under sanctions.... An Island... It will collapse within days.

 

[Markhor]

Robert Mugabe - standing for re-election 95 years young. Its good to see Zimbabwe taking a gamble with youth.

This SABC presenter sums it up with his reaction :

<blockquote class="twitter-video" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Watch how this SABC presenter reacts to the idea of a '95-year-old' presidential candidate <a href="https://t.co/hNAPOszows">pic.twitter.com/hNAPOszows</a></p>— Zim Media Review (@ZimMediaReview) <a href="https://twitter.com/ZimMediaReview/status/928852533573013504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 10, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Just resign you selfish piece of crap and let Zimbabwe step away from the abyss you've led them to.

 

[Bewal Express]

Robert Mugabe - standing for re-election 95 years young. Its good to see Zimbabwe taking a gamble with youth.

This SABC presenter sums it up with his reaction :

<blockquote class="twitter-video" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Watch how this SABC presenter reacts to the idea of a '95-year-old' presidential candidate <a href="https://t.co/hNAPOszows">pic.twitter.com/hNAPOszows</a></p>— Zim Media Review (@ZimMediaReview) <a href="https://twitter.com/ZimMediaReview/status/928852533573013504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 10, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Just resign you selfish piece of crap and let Zimbabwe step away from the abyss you've led them to.

It is the African way and also in nearly every 3rd world country. Nothing can help these countries to change and i can bet my bottom dollar that in a 1000 years time things will be the same politically and worse economically.

 

[Markhor]

It is the African way and also in nearly every 3rd world country. Nothing can help these countries to change and i can bet my bottom dollar that in a 1000 years time things will be the same politically and worse economically.

There are some exceptions - look at Botswana. Post-independence in 1966, Botswana was the third poorest country in the world with hardly any infrastructure and the vast majority of its population illiterate.

Their leader Seretse Khama did not go down the route of authoritarianism like so many post-independence third world countries but preserved democracy, nor did he send the white community packing like Mugabe.

Between 1966 and 1980, Botswana was the fastest growing economy in the world. They guaranteed themselves a percentage of the revenues from mining on healthcare and education. The country has a GDP per capita that is amongst the highest in the continent.

Nation building can be done provided you have the right leaders, and are not beholden to political families (see Bhuttos, Sharifs, Gandhis, Mugabes) who think they've a divine right to rule and elevate themselves to human deities.

 

[Bewal Express]

There are some exceptions - look at Botswana. Post-independence in 1966, Botswana was the third poorest country in the world with hardly any infrastructure and the vast majority of its population illiterate.

Their leader Seretse Khama did not go down the route of authoritarianism like so many post-independence third world countries but preserved democracy, nor did he send the white community packing like Mugabe.

Between 1966 and 1980, Botswana was the fastest growing economy in the world. They guaranteed themselves a percentage of the revenues from mining on healthcare and education. The country has a GDP per capita that is amongst the highest in the continent.

Nation building can be done provided you have the right leaders, and are not beholden to political families (see Bhuttos, Sharifs, Gandhis, Mugabes) who think they've a divine right to rule and elevate themselves to human deities.

For every Botswana there are 50 Zimbabwe's. Sadly South Africa is about to join the ranks unless some miraculous change of direction happens.

 

[PennOne]

I would like to know how much Mugabe government is paying Khalil for his services.

 

[finalfantasy7]

Great speech - spoilt by the person making the speech.

He cannot talk- yes I agree with his points about basically western government - however mugabe is a mass murderer himself