africanhope

Although I try and bringgood news from Africa, the bad news can not be ignored. It seems these days most of thebad news come from our neighbour, Zimbabwe.

Zim govt launches 'mine grabs': Africa: Zimbabwe: News24

This is justanother step on thedownward pathRobert Mugabe hand his so-called government has taken.

There is one hope. AMny of these mines, like Implats mentioned in the article, belong to big south African companies. They still have some sway in government, an maybe this will finally push the SA government to openly condemn Roberth Mugabe.

But somehow, I duibt it.

AH

__________________
“The subject no longer has to be mentioned by name. Someone is sick. Someone else is feeling better now. A friend has just gone back into the hospital. Another has died. The unspoken name, of course, is AIDS.”
“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”

Dragon Horse

Speaking of that dead demon, Ian Smith dying today...

The entire situation was messed up from the beginning, even before Mugabe took power. There were back room deals made to ensure nothing "happened to Smith" such as an "accident", a trial"or prison. Hell, he got to serve in parliament for Christ's Sake Why? Well the lives of 30 million or so blacks in Southern Africa were less important than the Soviet Threat, and this was the cold war. The whites in Zimbabwe and South Africa were fervent anti-communist, and more importantly South Africa mined chromium, a key component in the manufacturing of circuit boards and they did not sale this to the Soviets. They also had nukes and biological warfare weapons, and they had a strong interest in white controlled Zimbabwe and the way the "liberation" went down...because they were thinking about their future. America and Britain were thinking about the Cold War. This was the environment the negotiations of the future of "Rhodesia" were negotiated.

Thatcher and Reagan gave a lot of support to South Africa and Rhodesia, especially in the proxy war in Angola.

Notice what year majority rule returned to South Africa? Was it before or after the Berlin Wall fell? Keep your eye on the ball. :-)

In any case, there will be no happy medium reached in Zimbabwe as long as the majority of the land is not owned by the majority of the people.

Mugabe's problem is his corruption, but also the fact he used the "land reclamation" issue to keep himself in power, but he never intended on land reform to the people, just to his buddies. He made a deal with the whites to get power, but when they didn't do what he wanted the way he wanted, he thought he could change the rules of the game and they and Britain shut him down.

Who suffered in this power play? The people of Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe now has sky-high inflation to the point where people are fleeing to South Africa, former school teachers are prostituting, and kids are starving. That is due to British led sanctions. They are basically blockading the country due to their issues with Mugabe. The media talks all day long about "hyper inflation" and how bad it is, but they never talk about the cause. The cause is drought, sanctions, and botched land reform efforts. The media only mentions land reform, which is the least of the three. Why?

This issue gets very complicated....I think I will refer you to a source I actually trust to give some background on the situation. NYTimes and the BBC...nice for general info but I have caught them so many times in the last 3 years saying things about Japan and China that I know to be inaccurate (which I e-mail the editors about to no avail) I don't take anything at face value to be true.

Try this:

Kubatana - Archive - The Third Chimurenga and Zimbabwe's crisis - Hugh McCullum - Sept 04, 2006


Mugabe is corrupt and an populist authoritarian opportunist, but if he dies tomorrow of a heart attack or if he goes into exile, Zimbabwe will not be stable until the people get their land back. They didn't fight a revolution to allow a colonizing minority that is less than 1% of the population to own 95% of the land, especially when everyone know the land was acquired by ill gotten gains.

So for me, Mugabe could have never taken advantage of this situation if the situation did not exist to begin with. He is a symptom of a larger and older problem.

This does not mean that I support people violently taking the farms. Reality is that whites have owned the land so long and acquired so much capital they have formed an oligarchy of concentrated power that will not give itself to free and fair competition. so the black Zimbabwean is free to be poor and work for the people who formerly oppressed them.

Catch 22 is, if you remove the farmers, they will take their capital with them and no one can replace them because the average native is not educated to run a modern farm.

In that situation they should agree to do it in phases, but faster than they were before, and screw that 'willing buyer and seller crap"...in this world, you can buy almost everything else, but land is finite and it is power. Mugabe tried to do a Chinese Communist style land grab but the problem is, unlike Mao and the Chinese landlords, Mugabe had Britain backing up his landowners. The Chinese had nothing, they gave it up, got killed, or fled to Hong Kong, SE Asia, or Taiwan. Hell there was land reform in Taiwan as well, because even Chiang Kai Shek (Jiang Jie Shi) was not dumb enough to think he can have a vibrant economy with a minority of old school aristocrats owning everything. The communist in Mainland China could just outright shoot the landowners because they were bankrolled by the Soviets and had training team on the ground teaching modern farming techniques. Zimbabwe doesn't have that kind of broker backing them, so they had to negotiate and allow the white colonizers to keep their land. Their was never a hope of an "equal settlement" being made, the natives didn't have the clout even if Mugabe was legit.

So Mugabe has to go, but the land has to be liberated and redistributed fairly. If not, you will only get another Mugabe. He's in his 80s, he is not long for the world...

Somehow I don't think the UK would be stable if 95% of the land was owned by foreigners, lets say the Japanese. The other 5% owned by people who had colluded with the Japanese to get into Parliament. I don't think the average Brit would lay down for that. They should not expect anyone else to either.

Dragon Horse

People think Apartheid was about social repression based on racialism. Nope. Those were tools. Reality was, Apartheid in South Africa and Zimbabwe was about economics. It set up a system where a small oligarchy united by racialism could maximize rent seeking behavior against the majority. It was about "anti-market sustainable wealth transfer". Race was an afterthought to the elite, they knew they could use race to create an "us vs them" environment to rally support, once you set that situation up, it is a lot easier to do what oligarchies always do.

So after 'white majority rule, ended in Zimbabwe" white elites said, "well we dug this hole for you, and we used the dirty to build up our platform. Out of the goodness of our heart we are now going to take our foot off your head, you climb out and up to our level by yourself.

See, that is fair and free. Everyone is equal. LOL

africanhope

I will respond in detail to both posts later, but for now, just this on your second post - that is a huge over simplification of a very very complex issue. Saing it is just a racial issue would also be wrong, but what you aresaying above makes the same mistake. Aparthid is an extremely complex issue, with complex causes and results, and this should never be far from ones mind when one talks about the issue.

AH

__________________
“The subject no longer has to be mentioned by name. Someone is sick. Someone else is feeling better now. A friend has just gone back into the hospital. Another has died. The unspoken name, of course, is AIDS.”
“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”

africanhope

I agree with some things said above, but just needto point out one or two issues.

The reson for why, is quite simply because the other two are not major causes. The drought (that also hit South Africa) was not that severe, and has been over for a time now, without any sign of recovery, and the sacntions are not playingthat big a role, as South Africa, Zimbabwe's major trading partner, is not sanctioning Zimbabwe, and that trade continues as usual. The freexe of Zimbabwe's money in European banks might play a role, but i myself is not too convinced that that money would have ben used for the good of the people anyway.

Bad government is the major cause for the problems in Zim. Not only the land grabs, but also the so-called 'clean-up' missions by Mugabe's government, nationalisation (look at the mines story, as you said, this is not for the people, that is why 25% of ownership should begiven to the government). But I think this is what you are saying also.

About the peacedeal in Zim - it was justthat, a peacedeal. the war could have gone on for a while, but countries like South Africa with drew their support of the Smith government. Negotiatoions was started (like in SA a decade or mor later) and a paece settlement, seen as beneficial for both was reached. There are many reasons for this - both sides tired of fighting, the Liberation movement realsiing they actually needed the white framers if there is to be any success for the country, etc. The treaty, in it's pure form, was a good one, and example to the rest of Africa that peacefull setlements is possible.

The problem is that many of the issues in the teaty was then ignored. Brittian did not live up to it'spromises of money to the farmers to finance the land redestibution, black farmers were not trained and educated, and the whole process was too slow.



http://www.cgdev.org/files/2918_file...bwe_Crisis.pdf

AH

__________________
“The subject no longer has to be mentioned by name. Someone is sick. Someone else is feeling better now. A friend has just gone back into the hospital. Another has died. The unspoken name, of course, is AIDS.”
“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”

Dragon Horse

Actually if you look at this site:

Part 2: Though water is drying up, a Chinese metropolis booms - International Herald Tribune

Look at the map on the bottom left. Zimbabwe had a much worse water shortage problem than South Africa.

africanhope

Oh, because we are so much larger, and climatically a lot more varied than Zim, offcourse a drought does not hit us as hard as it does them. But the stats in the one article posted above shows that, yes, the drought worsened the situation, but in no means caused it.

AH

__________________
“The subject no longer has to be mentioned by name. Someone is sick. Someone else is feeling better now. A friend has just gone back into the hospital. Another has died. The unspoken name, of course, is AIDS.”
“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”

africanhope

And still it goes on, one feels for the people of Zim.

Zimbabweans laugh it off: Africa: Zimbabwe: News24

AH

__________________
“The subject no longer has to be mentioned by name. Someone is sick. Someone else is feeling better now. A friend has just gone back into the hospital. Another has died. The unspoken name, of course, is AIDS.”
“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”

captainmorgan

do you think we will see war when the ballots come back rigged to say mugabe wins again?

according to alot of sources, even his corrupt followers are becoming disenchanted with him.

africanhope

I don't know how much it will take to bring the people of Zim to rise against him. Yet another failed ballot? Who knows? The opposition for now seems commited to a peacefull solution. I think the plan is to wait for the 84 year old Mugabe to die, and then to try and negotiate with who ever follows him.

AH

__________________
“The subject no longer has to be mentioned by name. Someone is sick. Someone else is feeling better now. A friend has just gone back into the hospital. Another has died. The unspoken name, of course, is AIDS.”
“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”