Saturday, September 8, 2007

The slow death of Zimbabwe

It looks increasingly as if Robert Mugabe will become the first leader in history to utterly destroy his country. Tyrants like Hitler led their countries to catastrophic defeats, but the damage was inflicted by their enemies. Zimbabwe’s woes are entirely the fault of Mugabe and his cronies.

In a harrowing report from the country, the BBC’s Sue Lloyd-Roberts tells of malnourished babies dying in hospitals, policemen looting food supplies and refugees fleeing over the border into South Africa only to be robbed, raped and killed.

There’s no precedent for what’s happening in Zimbabwe today, and no telling how the end will come for a country that just a few years ago was one of the most prosperous in Africa. A mass uprising or coup seems unlikely – most people seem to have lost the will to resist, and Mugabe’s soldiers and police are among the few who are getting enough to eat.

There appears to be little prospect for things improving as long as Mugabe is alive. Lloyd-Roberts concludes:

Thanks to the ingenuity and tolerance of people still in the country and the remittances sent back by those who have left, Zimbabwe's death throes could last a long time yet.

Other African states show no interest in intervening, with their leaders happy to give Mugabe a pass out of respect for his status as a revolutionary hero. And the international community doesn’t want to know either, not least because it helped Mugabe into power. It’s instructive at this time to recall the role that Jimmy Carter’s administration played in this respect, and how Carter’s people worked to undermine Zimbabwe-Rhodesia's moderate black leaders.

For Western nations to threaten action against Mugabe and his band of crooks and thugs would also be to imply that our values were in some way superior to theirs, and no-one at the UN or the EU would be caught dead suggesting such as thing. When Western nations interfere in Africa, even with the best of intentions, it’s called imperialism; when Africans destroy their own country, it’s called self-determination.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello I have just read and enjoyed your site and will be checking back again. I came to you via your letter to Mark Steyn. After reading you may I suggest that you check out www.smalldeadanimals.com.
It is run by Kate McMillian out of Saskatchewan and is actually one of the largest and most influential blogs in Canada. It's themes and concerns closly mirror your own and has the added advantage of dozens of lively articulate interloculators who generate a wealth of insight and material. You may especially want to check out her recurring feature " The Sounds of Settled Science".
I have only known one Zimbawbwean. A young man in his late twenties, honest, hard working, good sense of humour, intelligent, married into a white Canadian family with very little cultural trouble. This was early 90's, Calgary Alberta, and he was a member ( yclept Charles Rainbow) of Joshua Nkomo's tribe and therefore driven out of his home territory by Mugabes' troops when the victorious anti-Ian Smith forces turned on each other. Charles in my estimation was a good guy and probably a fair representation of his fellow countrymen and it is a true tragedy what is happening to the country of the " big houses of stone".
Sincerely,
Robert Albin
Calgary Alberta
P.S. But, I am no expert!
P.P.S. I will mention your site to my fellow road kill

BallBounces said...

The West doesn't care if Africans suffer or their rights are violated, as long as it's not at the hands of other whites -- then it becomes a great moral crusade.

Which really suggests that white western moral crusades are not really about helping others, but about restoring or protecting western/white self-image.

In other words, "it's all about us".

Mike said...

Robert – hope you check back. Thanks for reminding me about SDA. I found it via (I think) Gateway Pundit a few weeks ago, shortly before I started this blog. Since then things have been pretty hectic, and SDA is one of many blogs I haven't been keeping up with. I will check back with SDA and drop Kate a line. And please do mention me to anyone you think would like MTC – I haven't really got the hang of all the promotional stuff yet! Also I have a very good friend who's a (white) Zimbabwean; I may ask him to write a post for MTC. Make sure you check out the Weekly Standard piece on Carter.

Mike

Lord Lynch said...

Hi Mike,

Found your site on a trawl through google-land while bored at work. I've had my fill of morning bias on the BBC Breakfast News over "climate change", the "fact" that fat people are bleeding the health service dry, and there preponderence on getting rich celebs to tell me how to live my life.

I get to see a lot of stuff on Zimbabwe and it makes my blood boil. I don't call it self determination, although, of course, I get your point. I call it self-extermination, and it is as racist as apartheid, but of course, much less glamorous.

Will keep reading this blog as it provides a bloody good read. I blog on sport, mainly, but have been known to delve, superficially, into the murky waters of climate change!