Last month I penned an obituary which was published in The Zimbabwean. Because so many of my (former)Rhodesian and (current)Zimbabwean friends and acquaintances as well as old political adversaries are scattered over the face of the earth, I forwarded copies per email to a couple of dozen email addresses. Naturally, the people with whom I remain in contact are almost uniformly political think-alikes and/or fellow opposition activists who doubted the wisdom of UDI and all that followed. I know only too well the mindset of my white contemporaries, the majority of whom so keenly placed their trust in Smith's leadership. There was no happy ending for any of us.
The responses to the obit are flowing in and for history's sake I welcome them, the many bouquets as well as a few brickbats. However, I am fully aware of how irrelevant all this seems now that Zimbabwe has been so long in the grip of the tyrant Robert Mugabe. But here, for the record, is the testimony of one Zimbabwe-born, `consistent' and unrepentant opponent of the policies of a former frontiersman, the recently departed Ian Smith:
P 15 – The Zimbabwean 29 November -5 December
IAN DOUGLAS SMITH: OBITUARY
Smith’s intransigence was Mugabe’s opportunity
IF IT HAD NOT BEEN FOR THE REPRESSIVE POLICIES OF SMITH AND THE RF, WHICH LED TO THE VICIOUS BUSH WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE, THERE IS NO WAY PEOPLE WOULD HAVE WELCOMED SOMEBODY LIKE MUGABE WITH OPEN ARMS IN 1980.
Ian Douglas Smith, the last white Prime Minister of Rhodesia, aroused passionate debate in his heyday - and this is being replayed after his death on November 20, 2007. The “Western Christian civilization” which he purported to defend requires that we should not speak ill of the dead, but it seems dishonest to pretend that his legacy of a lost, un-winnable, war against his own indigenous population, has been wiped out by his final exit.
In the first days following the news of the peaceful ending of his long life, far from the country he undoubtedly loved, it is hard to forget the effect of his iron-willed, white supremacist policies on the lives of a largely un-enfranchised black majority.
Today, a great leap of selective memory has come crashing down on to the name of his successor, the black man’s liberator turned evil oppressor, Robert Gabriel Mugabe. It is as if Mugabe’s disastrous rule is the inevitable consequence of not allowing Smith’s Rhodesian Front party to rule for the “thousand years” that he promised. That is not right. Ian Smith’s intransigence was Mugabe’s opportunity.
In media flashbacks, Ian Smith is repeatedly shown uttering his vow: “No majority rule – ever”. He stuck to it until early in 1978 when a brutal and bloody war, forced him to change his tune. On March 3 he made a belated attempt to get an “internal settlement”, giving limited power to moderate blacks led by Bishop Abel Muzorewa.
Then within months, after his erstwhile supporters in apartheid South Africa “betrayed” (his word) and abandoned him he had no choice but to renege on his UDI promises and, at Lancaster House, get the best deal he and Muzorewa could with the militant nationalist leaders (Mugabe and Nkomo).
Ironically, the midwife of the rebel Smith’s “final settlement” of its constitutional dispute with Britain turned out to be his enemy, the British government itself. Further, the changeling “babe” Mugabe was to become the personification of the RF’s self-fulfilling prophecy that a black government would yield “One man, one vote – once”.
If Smith, unlike the tyrant Mugabe, really agreed to go to the negotiating table to save the country, he could have saved it well before the guerilla war got under way in 1972. His worshipping, white electorate might have mandated him to share power with the leaders of “the happiest Africans in the world” before the masses were made unhappy by being assured that they would never be allowed to own their African soil.
In the context of the Cold War era, Smith’s overplayed anti-Communist propaganda yielded another self-fulfilling prophecy: Rhodesia fell into the hands of an avowed Marxist Leninist autocrat.
The son of an immigrant Scottish butcher, Smith was born in 1919 in Shurugwe, a small, Southern Rhodesian mining town. He began his political career by joining (in 1948), the inappropriately named, Liberal Party which was opposed to Prime Minister Huggins policies of gradual racial integration.
His commerce degree studies at Rhodes University were interrupted by WW2 service in 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron of the RAF. His reputation as a war hero, shot down over Italy and joining the partisans before escaping to Britain, was widely acclaimed. He certainly had charismatic appeal for the large majority of Rhodesian whites. Tragically, many sacrificed their sons to the lost cause of the “bush” war.
Smith’s political career had moved from early conservatism to a more enlightened period during the Federal experiment (1953 – 63) when he was Chief Whip of the UFP (United Federal Party). A ranching farmer, he moved again to the Right and eventually helped to found the RF. In the 15 years that he ruled Rhodesia there was no deflecting his stubborn refusal to face the facts of de-colonization in Africa.
He was egged on by an 80% majority of a deluded, tiny white electorate and by his preferred clutch of ultra-conservative civil servants (Hostes Nicolle, the notorious secretary for Internal Affairs being the most influential), his domineering party Chairman, “Des” Frost and the iron-fisted, legal luminary (another Desmond) Lardner-Burke.
When, as Prime Minister in 1965, he declared his UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence) wiser heads were ignored or ignominiously sacked or chose to resign or to depart the country.
His policies were racially discriminatory towards the aspirations of blacks although, by his own admission, they were among the best educated on the African continent. More than three quarters of the rural, black population wanted, nay, needed, more and better land but he ignored wise counsel.
The will of his most powerful backers among white land-owners and businesses with vested interests in maintaining the status quo, always prevailed. The rural poor, however blessed with full bellies, a functioning health system and other the trickle-down benefits of a flourishing agro-based economy, were unwilling to be denied equal access to the good life of the average white citizen. Progress towards racial integration, made during Federation with Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) was arrested or turned back Like his successor, Mugabe, he was determined to hold on to power.
A veteran black journalist puts the run up to the double catastrophe of Rhodesian Ian Smith and Zimbabwean Robert Mugabe further back in time: “If gradualism had happened back in the 50s there is NO WAY people would have welcomed somebody like Mugabe with open arms in 1980; all they wanted was an end to the war.”
Smith’s autobiography, “The Great Betrayal” said little of the perspectives of black Zimbabweans and, as Mugabe is currently doing, he blamed everybody but himself for the eventual collapse of a potentially great country. - Diana Mitchell
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
On the road to creating warlords
Exactly ten years ago, an upstanding (and outstanding) Zimbabwean businessman, Nigel Chanakira, predicted that if Zimbabwe's hopes for democracy continued to decline, we would end up with warlord-ism.
The report of military personnel ignoring vice-President Joseph Msika's appeal to them to spare the remaining (white) farms and stop shoving out some (black) settler farmers who had staked their claims (legitimately or otherwise)to the best farms - comes as a forewarning of worse things to come. It confirms Chanakira's prediction. Added to the ultra-racist Didymus Mutasa's promise to remove every last vestige of white business ownership in Zimbabwe, the outlook for the future of a beloved country is very bleak. Will the Generals turn against each other next? Will they and their little battalions fight each other for the best businesses and loveliest farms? If this should happen, warlords will pillage what little is left of Zimbabwe's resources. Democrats within the country and those watching it anxiously from abroad will devoutly pray that this does not happen.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
The report of military personnel ignoring vice-President Joseph Msika's appeal to them to spare the remaining (white) farms and stop shoving out some (black) settler farmers who had staked their claims (legitimately or otherwise)to the best farms - comes as a forewarning of worse things to come. It confirms Chanakira's prediction. Added to the ultra-racist Didymus Mutasa's promise to remove every last vestige of white business ownership in Zimbabwe, the outlook for the future of a beloved country is very bleak. Will the Generals turn against each other next? Will they and their little battalions fight each other for the best businesses and loveliest farms? If this should happen, warlords will pillage what little is left of Zimbabwe's resources. Democrats within the country and those watching it anxiously from abroad will devoutly pray that this does not happen.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Friday, September 28, 2007
"A political decision"
Paul Mangwana says the decision to `indigenize' the Zimbabwe economy (i.e. give 51% shareholding to locals) under the Indigenization and Empowerment law which passed through Parliament on Wednesday, cannot be reversed. He thinks the revolution will not be complete until the last white-owned business is despatched to the pages of history. Curiously this thinking is premised on the country having been colonized by force. I wonder how many countries in today's world have, at some time been colonized by force. It beggars belief that the rampant racism of the ruling regime has out-done the racisim of the former colonizers - in spite of claims made even by Mugabe himself (read his reconciliation speech of 1980) - that racism would not be tolerated in free Zimbabwe. He doesn't care if Standard Chartered bank, for example, pulls out of the country, regardless of the effect this may have on an already near-destroyed economy.
"Mangwana labelled local managers in the financial institutions "neo-liberals" who take instructions from London. He said they would never be given space to reverse.." what he termed a political decision(my emphasis). The last time I heard those words, "a political decision" they came from the lips of a Rhodesian Front Minister who, in 1966, said that keeping black children's schools out of white areas was a political decision.
Strange things, these political decisions. I am writing right now about how it was that very phrase "a political decision" which galvanized me into fighting, first for the rights of black children to an education equal to that of whites and then for the removal of all forms of racial discrimination in Rhodesia.
Mangwana, so proudly revolutionary has let the cat out of the bag. He and his cronies fought not so much for Zimbabwe's liberation as for the power to introduce reverse racism.
I once believed that they were better than that.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
"Mangwana labelled local managers in the financial institutions "neo-liberals" who take instructions from London. He said they would never be given space to reverse.." what he termed a political decision(my emphasis). The last time I heard those words, "a political decision" they came from the lips of a Rhodesian Front Minister who, in 1966, said that keeping black children's schools out of white areas was a political decision.
Strange things, these political decisions. I am writing right now about how it was that very phrase "a political decision" which galvanized me into fighting, first for the rights of black children to an education equal to that of whites and then for the removal of all forms of racial discrimination in Rhodesia.
Mangwana, so proudly revolutionary has let the cat out of the bag. He and his cronies fought not so much for Zimbabwe's liberation as for the power to introduce reverse racism.
I once believed that they were better than that.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Hello again
Hello again. I have been absent from this blogging business for weeks, mainly because I have experienced one of those recurring periods of doubt as to whether I have anything to say that is worth the reader's time. I hope it is not age related and is merely attributable to the severe disruption of the normal pace of my life. I seem to have been born with an obsessive need to hurry through whatever I am doing in order to get down to other thing that I ought to be doing - like writing. Then there are the interruptions, the unavoidable ones like the need to take care of a precious, seriously ill husband. Writing almost always goes on the back burner.
For the time being I shall publish items already published, starting with my latest contribution to The Zimbabwean which was placed somewhat invisibly at the sports end (there is a huge crush of more worthy items of a serious nature taking up most of the paper's space). The following is one of my rarer departures from my usual style (I leave it to my readers to give a name to that style) and reproduce here a short piece of satire. I am not alone in being sick of Mugabe's blame game. He has to be demented if he really believes that horses go before carts i.e he refuses to acknowledge that he is to blame for the destruction of Zimbabwe's vibrant agricultural sector and must take responsibility for the inevitable collapse of the country's economy.
I introduced my skit with a remark which was not published but which I repeat here: I know full well that Zimbabwe's situation as extremely serious while Robert Mugabe, who is generally regarded as mad with power, can no longer be taken seriously. I headed my piece `Imagine`- the word most recently associated with John Lennon's popular song. Unfortunately the sub-editor in his/her wisdom changed it to `Just imagine', putting an entirely different flavour to the piece.
Here it is:
IMAGINE
It is early July, 2007. Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, and Nicolas Sarkozy and the lesser known Jose Luis Zapatero, (Spain) Giorgio Napolitano (Italy), Jan Peter Balkenende (Netherlands) and Guy Verhofstadt (Belgium) are sitting around a table debating ways of destroying Mugabe (Zimbabwe's adored leader) by deliberately raising inflation in his country to hitherto unimaginable rates and thus making food for ordinary Zimbabweans unaffordable.
Gordon: (Zimbabwe’s former Colonial Oppressor): My friends, I must report that Tony used to get all the blame for Mugabe's troubles and was only half hearted about solving this most important of the world’s current problems. He should have known that Iraq was a mere pinprick. Money talks my friends. My long experience talking money gives me the edge here and I have a brand new idea: lets lean on our close acquaintances in the Zimbabwe supermarkets. I don’t know if a fellow called Sam Levy, who is big in supermarkets still has any influence there, but somebody might persuade him to start a movement doubling food prices every hour. That should get quick political results.
Angela: Great idea. It was very effective in our country at one time. I will put this matter at the top of our agenda at the next meeting of our Bundesrat.
Nicolas: We used to welcome his wife’s shopping trips to Paris. She was an important contributor to our economy, but I will not stand in your way this time. I am new in the Presidential job but I want to remain among the world’s top leaders. My foreign policy regarding Mugabe’s country will ensure this.
Jose Luis: Very important to get this policy right. A pity we have to be so tough because I have always been impressed with Mugabe allowing a building in his capital to be named KARIGAMOMBE. I believe this means Kill the Bull?
Giorgio: Don’t forget that I will be making a great sacrifice in making an enemy of Mugabe. Italian shoe imports are much prized amongst the wives of his cronies and we cannot do without this huge contribution to our industry.
Jan Peter: The matter is of such high priority that we can lean on some distant relatives in South Africa to co-operate. They won’t mind losing touch with cross border traders…
Guy: (interrupts) Since this issue is even more important than climate change, shouldn’t we ask Gordon to make it a priority concern at the forthcoming EU/AU meeting?
Gordon: I’m not going. Can’t sit at the same table with Mugabe.
Chorus: Oh No! (they all know that Mugabe is the most important man in the world, especially Giorgio, recently elected to office and who insists on him being referred to as `Numero Uno’
For the time being I shall publish items already published, starting with my latest contribution to The Zimbabwean which was placed somewhat invisibly at the sports end (there is a huge crush of more worthy items of a serious nature taking up most of the paper's space). The following is one of my rarer departures from my usual style (I leave it to my readers to give a name to that style) and reproduce here a short piece of satire. I am not alone in being sick of Mugabe's blame game. He has to be demented if he really believes that horses go before carts i.e he refuses to acknowledge that he is to blame for the destruction of Zimbabwe's vibrant agricultural sector and must take responsibility for the inevitable collapse of the country's economy.
I introduced my skit with a remark which was not published but which I repeat here: I know full well that Zimbabwe's situation as extremely serious while Robert Mugabe, who is generally regarded as mad with power, can no longer be taken seriously. I headed my piece `Imagine`- the word most recently associated with John Lennon's popular song. Unfortunately the sub-editor in his/her wisdom changed it to `Just imagine', putting an entirely different flavour to the piece.
Here it is:
IMAGINE
It is early July, 2007. Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, and Nicolas Sarkozy and the lesser known Jose Luis Zapatero, (Spain) Giorgio Napolitano (Italy), Jan Peter Balkenende (Netherlands) and Guy Verhofstadt (Belgium) are sitting around a table debating ways of destroying Mugabe (Zimbabwe's adored leader) by deliberately raising inflation in his country to hitherto unimaginable rates and thus making food for ordinary Zimbabweans unaffordable.
Gordon: (Zimbabwe’s former Colonial Oppressor): My friends, I must report that Tony used to get all the blame for Mugabe's troubles and was only half hearted about solving this most important of the world’s current problems. He should have known that Iraq was a mere pinprick. Money talks my friends. My long experience talking money gives me the edge here and I have a brand new idea: lets lean on our close acquaintances in the Zimbabwe supermarkets. I don’t know if a fellow called Sam Levy, who is big in supermarkets still has any influence there, but somebody might persuade him to start a movement doubling food prices every hour. That should get quick political results.
Angela: Great idea. It was very effective in our country at one time. I will put this matter at the top of our agenda at the next meeting of our Bundesrat.
Nicolas: We used to welcome his wife’s shopping trips to Paris. She was an important contributor to our economy, but I will not stand in your way this time. I am new in the Presidential job but I want to remain among the world’s top leaders. My foreign policy regarding Mugabe’s country will ensure this.
Jose Luis: Very important to get this policy right. A pity we have to be so tough because I have always been impressed with Mugabe allowing a building in his capital to be named KARIGAMOMBE. I believe this means Kill the Bull?
Giorgio: Don’t forget that I will be making a great sacrifice in making an enemy of Mugabe. Italian shoe imports are much prized amongst the wives of his cronies and we cannot do without this huge contribution to our industry.
Jan Peter: The matter is of such high priority that we can lean on some distant relatives in South Africa to co-operate. They won’t mind losing touch with cross border traders…
Guy: (interrupts) Since this issue is even more important than climate change, shouldn’t we ask Gordon to make it a priority concern at the forthcoming EU/AU meeting?
Gordon: I’m not going. Can’t sit at the same table with Mugabe.
Chorus: Oh No! (they all know that Mugabe is the most important man in the world, especially Giorgio, recently elected to office and who insists on him being referred to as `Numero Uno’
Thursday, April 19, 2007
NIGERIA looks down on Zimbabwe
"I would be poor if things were like Zimbabwe" says Nigeria's richest businessman
Listening to BBC World News this morning I heard a man described as Nigeria's richest business man give a `rare' interview. In haste I must write down why I find a single phrase, uttered by this man, so shattering. No time to check the spelling: Aleko Dangote was explaining his support for President Obasanjo's chosen PDP successor in this week's forthcoming elections. Tackled on the corruption, endemic in his country, Dangote said that no country was free of corruption (at national level) but that this should not be allowed to go too far because "I would be poor if things were like Zimbabwe".
Wow! I remember so well the jubilation of Nathan Shamuyarira, once an admired fellow Zimbabwean media man when the Nigerians paid his ZANU (PF) some seven millions (real money in Zimbabwe way back in 1980) to buy out South Africa's Argus Africa News which had governed newspapers in former Rhodesia. This enabled the ruling party, to set up the Mass Media Trust. It became one of so many institutions in `liberated' Zimbabwe which ultimately betrayed its high-sounding, founding principles. The MMT aimed to `act as a "buffer" between government and the only national newspaper chain'. (see Richard Saunders booklet Zimbabwe's Growth towards Democracy 1980 - 2000 accompanying Edwina Spicer's film "Never the same again"). Thank God Nathan failed to get me, a friend of nationalists and Willy Musarurwa, his former best friend, appointed to the founding Board of Trustees - now a despicable travesty of a protecter of press freedom in independent Zimbabwe.
I wonder if the Nigerian government could possible understand the irony of the situation that Nathan and his cronies have connived at for 27 years in bringing about today's destroyed Zimbabwe?
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Listening to BBC World News this morning I heard a man described as Nigeria's richest business man give a `rare' interview. In haste I must write down why I find a single phrase, uttered by this man, so shattering. No time to check the spelling: Aleko Dangote was explaining his support for President Obasanjo's chosen PDP successor in this week's forthcoming elections. Tackled on the corruption, endemic in his country, Dangote said that no country was free of corruption (at national level) but that this should not be allowed to go too far because "I would be poor if things were like Zimbabwe".
Wow! I remember so well the jubilation of Nathan Shamuyarira, once an admired fellow Zimbabwean media man when the Nigerians paid his ZANU (PF) some seven millions (real money in Zimbabwe way back in 1980) to buy out South Africa's Argus Africa News which had governed newspapers in former Rhodesia. This enabled the ruling party, to set up the Mass Media Trust. It became one of so many institutions in `liberated' Zimbabwe which ultimately betrayed its high-sounding, founding principles. The MMT aimed to `act as a "buffer" between government and the only national newspaper chain'. (see Richard Saunders booklet Zimbabwe's Growth towards Democracy 1980 - 2000 accompanying Edwina Spicer's film "Never the same again"). Thank God Nathan failed to get me, a friend of nationalists and Willy Musarurwa, his former best friend, appointed to the founding Board of Trustees - now a despicable travesty of a protecter of press freedom in independent Zimbabwe.
I wonder if the Nigerian government could possible understand the irony of the situation that Nathan and his cronies have connived at for 27 years in bringing about today's destroyed Zimbabwe?
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Unbloodied and bowed
As the hated agents of Robert Mugabe's violence against his political opposition busy themselves cracking skulls, breaking limbs and drawing the blood of non-violent protesters, I bow my head in shame. Not a hair on my Zimbabwean head has been touched. I am far from the scene of these crimes. I feel an acute sense of guilt that I have escaped, physically unhurt from the consequences of political actions in which I took an active part for at least forty years.
When I made a committment to devote my waking hours to the pursuit of equality, liberty and democratic governance for my fellow citizens - having benefited from being born amongst the privileged white settlers of Rhodesia - I never dreamed that the sacrifices that are being demanded of my friends in the Movement for Democratic Change in today's Zimbabwe would be so great. As a founding member of the National Constitutional Assembly, from which the MDC branched in the late nineties, I believed that peaceful, evolutionary, regime change was possible. I had opted out of direct participation in the political fight several years earlier after the Forum for Democratic Reform, an opposition party I had helped to found, failed to make headway against the Mugabe regime; this in spite of, or even because of our gentle and gentlemanly leader, the late Enoch Dumbutshena, former Chief Justice of Zimbabwe. My support for the Young Turks - as well as a few older ones, male and female - who stepped forward into the MDC firing line (quite literally as it has turned out) never wavered and I used my contacts among fellow would-be democrats and their sponsors wherever and whenever they could be helpful. Writing has been my ongoing tool - an adversarial weapon only so long as Zimbabweans were allowed to read the words of encouragement offered to my fellow Zimbabweans in our pursuit of freedom.
Only now in a technological age that forbids shielding wrong-doing is the world beginning to hear the MDC's cries of protest. In Zimbabwe it is a time of deliberate killing and maiming and bludgeoning men and women of great courage by cowardly, armed police and military functionaries of a discredited ruling party and its vain, arrogant and tyrannical leader, the once admired Robert Mugabe. I am unbloodied but bowed by the shame of it all. I rise, however, and bow low in sincere homage to my suffering friends who are putting their lives on the line for the restoration of Zimbabwe to its long-delayed liberation from political oppression.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
When I made a committment to devote my waking hours to the pursuit of equality, liberty and democratic governance for my fellow citizens - having benefited from being born amongst the privileged white settlers of Rhodesia - I never dreamed that the sacrifices that are being demanded of my friends in the Movement for Democratic Change in today's Zimbabwe would be so great. As a founding member of the National Constitutional Assembly, from which the MDC branched in the late nineties, I believed that peaceful, evolutionary, regime change was possible. I had opted out of direct participation in the political fight several years earlier after the Forum for Democratic Reform, an opposition party I had helped to found, failed to make headway against the Mugabe regime; this in spite of, or even because of our gentle and gentlemanly leader, the late Enoch Dumbutshena, former Chief Justice of Zimbabwe. My support for the Young Turks - as well as a few older ones, male and female - who stepped forward into the MDC firing line (quite literally as it has turned out) never wavered and I used my contacts among fellow would-be democrats and their sponsors wherever and whenever they could be helpful. Writing has been my ongoing tool - an adversarial weapon only so long as Zimbabweans were allowed to read the words of encouragement offered to my fellow Zimbabweans in our pursuit of freedom.
Only now in a technological age that forbids shielding wrong-doing is the world beginning to hear the MDC's cries of protest. In Zimbabwe it is a time of deliberate killing and maiming and bludgeoning men and women of great courage by cowardly, armed police and military functionaries of a discredited ruling party and its vain, arrogant and tyrannical leader, the once admired Robert Mugabe. I am unbloodied but bowed by the shame of it all. I rise, however, and bow low in sincere homage to my suffering friends who are putting their lives on the line for the restoration of Zimbabwe to its long-delayed liberation from political oppression.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Ug-Babwe and Zim-Ganda
Question: What's the difference between a duck?
Answer: One of its legs is both the same.
That little riddle makes about as much sense as what is going on in Zimbabwe today.
I am forever searching for some clues which might help Zimbabweans (and the dwindling numbers of concerned Zimbabwe watchers) arrive at an educated estimate of how the country's current crisis will end. Doing a little revision for yesterday's blog I concentrated on Uganda's late 20th century history. I noted a few remarkable similarities in the performance of two post colonial despots, Amin and Mugabe, both of whom started well and then went irredeemably rotten. They will always be as different as a jackal is from a crocodile in their natures and yet leagues apart if you compare their CVs and their style of leadership. Still, their legacies, a litany of lost opportunities will be the same. Examples of the differences between the two men and their disastrous policies are as unhelpful as they are also significant. You can draw no clear conclusions: Amin was a semi-literate professional soldier, Mugabe a highly educated individual who pitched himself into the head of a guerilla army with absolutely no preparation for the job. Neither seemed to understand modern economics. Both developed a hatred of the British: Amin because of the arrogance of British army officers; Mugabe because the British government condemned his land grab. Amin waded in the blood of his enemies, Mugabe finds less violent yet equally tortuous ways of staying in power. Amin betrayed his sponsor, Milton Obote, Mugabe betrayed his fellow nationalist, Joshua Nkomo at the end of their joint but separated struggle against white rule. Amin depended on the support of the military throughout his rule; Mugabe, coming towards the end of his, has to rely on the loyalty of his military chiefs. Both leaders came into power on a wave of popularity - Amin because of the unpopularity of Obote and Mugabe because Zimbabweans were tired of war. Amin ruled by whim because he could not understand the business of government, Mugabe, after his first decade in office came to rule by whim, perverting and manipulating government for his own ends. One most remarkable similarity betweent the two is encapsulated in this quote by Martin Meredith from a defecting Ugandan Finance Minister: ` The government is a one-man show. Impossible decisions are taken by General Amin which ministers are expected to implement. The decisions bear no relationship to the country's available resources'. Another interesting parallel, `When budgets ran out, Amin routinely ordered the central bank to print more currency to `solve' the problem'. Amin's attempt to regain popularity by turning on his Asian population, the bedrock of the country's economic prosperity can be compared with Mugabe's turning on white farmers for similar reasons and with a similar result. Disaster. As in Zimbabwe today, the hopeful African population benefited little while fat cats grew fatter. Strange that in both countries applause was received from other African countries. Meredith concludes `However cruel, capricious and brutal, many of Amin's actions may have seemed in the West, in much of Africa he was regarded as something of a hero. By expelling the Asian community he was seen to be fearlessly asserting African interests'. Sad. But one great difference here lies not in the nature of the leadership but in the nature of the majority of Zimbabweans. They do not applaud their living tyrant. Even his cronies are surreptitiously working at his removal from power. Blood is unlikely, in this writer's opinion, to flow. And that is the great difference between the two countries: not their leaders' destructive policies, but the nature of their people. That is my only remaining hope for Zimbabwe. Her people seem determined, at whatever the cost, to abjure bloodletting. They know it cannot solve their problems.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Answer: One of its legs is both the same.
That little riddle makes about as much sense as what is going on in Zimbabwe today.
I am forever searching for some clues which might help Zimbabweans (and the dwindling numbers of concerned Zimbabwe watchers) arrive at an educated estimate of how the country's current crisis will end. Doing a little revision for yesterday's blog I concentrated on Uganda's late 20th century history. I noted a few remarkable similarities in the performance of two post colonial despots, Amin and Mugabe, both of whom started well and then went irredeemably rotten. They will always be as different as a jackal is from a crocodile in their natures and yet leagues apart if you compare their CVs and their style of leadership. Still, their legacies, a litany of lost opportunities will be the same. Examples of the differences between the two men and their disastrous policies are as unhelpful as they are also significant. You can draw no clear conclusions: Amin was a semi-literate professional soldier, Mugabe a highly educated individual who pitched himself into the head of a guerilla army with absolutely no preparation for the job. Neither seemed to understand modern economics. Both developed a hatred of the British: Amin because of the arrogance of British army officers; Mugabe because the British government condemned his land grab. Amin waded in the blood of his enemies, Mugabe finds less violent yet equally tortuous ways of staying in power. Amin betrayed his sponsor, Milton Obote, Mugabe betrayed his fellow nationalist, Joshua Nkomo at the end of their joint but separated struggle against white rule. Amin depended on the support of the military throughout his rule; Mugabe, coming towards the end of his, has to rely on the loyalty of his military chiefs. Both leaders came into power on a wave of popularity - Amin because of the unpopularity of Obote and Mugabe because Zimbabweans were tired of war. Amin ruled by whim because he could not understand the business of government, Mugabe, after his first decade in office came to rule by whim, perverting and manipulating government for his own ends. One most remarkable similarity betweent the two is encapsulated in this quote by Martin Meredith from a defecting Ugandan Finance Minister: ` The government is a one-man show. Impossible decisions are taken by General Amin which ministers are expected to implement. The decisions bear no relationship to the country's available resources'. Another interesting parallel, `When budgets ran out, Amin routinely ordered the central bank to print more currency to `solve' the problem'. Amin's attempt to regain popularity by turning on his Asian population, the bedrock of the country's economic prosperity can be compared with Mugabe's turning on white farmers for similar reasons and with a similar result. Disaster. As in Zimbabwe today, the hopeful African population benefited little while fat cats grew fatter. Strange that in both countries applause was received from other African countries. Meredith concludes `However cruel, capricious and brutal, many of Amin's actions may have seemed in the West, in much of Africa he was regarded as something of a hero. By expelling the Asian community he was seen to be fearlessly asserting African interests'. Sad. But one great difference here lies not in the nature of the leadership but in the nature of the majority of Zimbabweans. They do not applaud their living tyrant. Even his cronies are surreptitiously working at his removal from power. Blood is unlikely, in this writer's opinion, to flow. And that is the great difference between the two countries: not their leaders' destructive policies, but the nature of their people. That is my only remaining hope for Zimbabwe. Her people seem determined, at whatever the cost, to abjure bloodletting. They know it cannot solve their problems.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
That Scottish Idi Amin
So the the spectre of Idi Amin has been raised yet again. I have just read a report on the making of a feature film in Uganda, presenting this latest reincarnation of Africa's number one dead despot - due for release on Friday, January 12. Titled `The Last King of Scotland' and directed by Kevin MacDonald (there's a good old Scottish name) the report has brought one pretty depressing observation to light: Stephen Robinson was rightly perturbed to discover that `The visitor to Uganda soon finds that those who were not directly targeted by his henchmen speak of Amin with a certain pride...After Nelson Mandela, Amin is the most famous contemporary African, and Ugandans seem rather proud that he made their country known to the rest of the world, albeit for the wrong reasons`. I suppose the estimated 300 000 deaths of his countrymen under Amin's despotic rule, coupled with his shocking treatment of his Indian citizens brands him as possibly the most infamous African of modern times. But what has prompted me to ruminate over his history is that I believe Robert Mugabe is giving Idi Amin some strong competition for the premier position among African despots.
Fellow African leaders whose performance is less than salutary are hanging on to a blind pride in Mugabe's performance. Overlooked is his responsibility for the killing, under his rule, of a mere 20,000 fellow Zimbabweans who were dwellers in Matabeleland and who spoke in that Southern part of the country the only African language other than Mugabe's majority MaShona people. If he lives long enough to stand trial for his crimes against humanity, the details of all this will no doubt fascinate future filmgoers. But for now, he and his cronies are still hanging tenaciously on to power while millions of innocent men, women and children, trapped in once-prospering Zimbabwe, face possible death by attrition. The majority throughout Zimbabwe are threatened with rampant disease and, if nothing changes, the prospect of slow starvation. Only because about a quarter of the population have chosen to flee to places where they can earn sufficient cash to remit to families - who would probably die if left unassisted - is there no film footage of Ethiopian-style skeletal babies and stick figured mothers in today's Zimbabwe. And of course there has been no blood-letting for two decades. That would get the world's attention. Mugabe is no buffoon. At a few weeks off 83 he is still the articulate, even eloquent and cunning politician who came from nowhere to head the guerrillas who caused the collapse of white rule in Rhodesia. Yes I know about his past. I consider myself something of of an authority on the details, having been closely acquainted with many of the most worthy of his contemporaries. He was raised a Catholic but like the despotic Hitler, for one example, he had severe psychological problems arising out of his personal health problems and family tragedies and setbacks. Future film-makers will be free to put whatever spin they choose on the details of all that but I am sure that the story of his destruction of a country he claimed to set free will set a whole lot of hares running to prove that he has outdone Amin in the top-despot stakes.
I have more to say about the Amin story as described in the Telegraph report, but not in this blog.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Fellow African leaders whose performance is less than salutary are hanging on to a blind pride in Mugabe's performance. Overlooked is his responsibility for the killing, under his rule, of a mere 20,000 fellow Zimbabweans who were dwellers in Matabeleland and who spoke in that Southern part of the country the only African language other than Mugabe's majority MaShona people. If he lives long enough to stand trial for his crimes against humanity, the details of all this will no doubt fascinate future filmgoers. But for now, he and his cronies are still hanging tenaciously on to power while millions of innocent men, women and children, trapped in once-prospering Zimbabwe, face possible death by attrition. The majority throughout Zimbabwe are threatened with rampant disease and, if nothing changes, the prospect of slow starvation. Only because about a quarter of the population have chosen to flee to places where they can earn sufficient cash to remit to families - who would probably die if left unassisted - is there no film footage of Ethiopian-style skeletal babies and stick figured mothers in today's Zimbabwe. And of course there has been no blood-letting for two decades. That would get the world's attention. Mugabe is no buffoon. At a few weeks off 83 he is still the articulate, even eloquent and cunning politician who came from nowhere to head the guerrillas who caused the collapse of white rule in Rhodesia. Yes I know about his past. I consider myself something of of an authority on the details, having been closely acquainted with many of the most worthy of his contemporaries. He was raised a Catholic but like the despotic Hitler, for one example, he had severe psychological problems arising out of his personal health problems and family tragedies and setbacks. Future film-makers will be free to put whatever spin they choose on the details of all that but I am sure that the story of his destruction of a country he claimed to set free will set a whole lot of hares running to prove that he has outdone Amin in the top-despot stakes.
I have more to say about the Amin story as described in the Telegraph report, but not in this blog.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
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