A VERY PERTINENT PETITION
I have just spent an hour of my extremely limited time responding to an Avaaz call per email to get my friends to join me in signing a petition to help save Zimbabwe.
The Avaaz.com email includes a mock-up of a poster advertisement the organization will flight in the press, particularly in South Africa. It is very pertinent. I can't reproduce it here but it states: "Mugabe Saved Zimbabwe from Colonialism - Now Help us to Save Zimbabwe from Him".
I am not sure that petitions will have any effect, but one can only hope. Meanwhile, I must get on with my memoirs of a lifetime in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, sadly interrupted by the serious illness of my best friend, my husband. I have resolved, for now, to concentrate entirely on the work and close my eyes to any further petitions, and even to limit my news-watching (very hard to do) until the work is done.
One final hope, when I look around again, Mugabe will be gone and the man's madness that has almost destroyed my former home will have gone with him, together with his abominable friends and supporters.
There is still hope for the more distant future of Zimbabwe. Here is how I see it:
Genocide is the wrong word for what is happening in Zimbabwe. Massacre and scorched earth would be better words to describe the actions of Mugabe's storm troopers.
A Genocide is a lethal attack by one ethnic group upon another. The MDC is made up of representatives from every every racial or tribal group of its citizens. Mugabe is hell bent to rid himself of every Zimbabwean who no longer admires him or recognises him as a legitimate President.
I was in at the founding of the MDC; was present when Morgan Tsvangirai was elected, unopposed as the party's leader. The split in the party's ranks was unfortunate but the two sides are now reconciled.
That is the hope for the future: never before has such unity among the people been
so bravely and so determinedly pursued. The old racial and tribal divisions
have been forgotten and that is what the liberation struggle aspired to.
This last step of a united people, ruled by democrats awaits the departure
of Mugabe....
... and the rest is repetition. So far, endless repetition.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
MUGABE'S GUN VS OPPOSITION'S "X"
Just as we began to think that the old man was being driven to unstoppable violence by the forces that he himself unleashed in 2000, he confirms what we have long suspected: he really is, always has been, a violent, cruel and mentally unbalanced tyrant who will kill his own people rather than give up power. The words have come out of his own mouth in the week before the critical election that could seal his fate or that of the majority of the Zimbabwe people. His collaborators in crime are now seeing the punishment they must endure if he is defeated or he dies. They hope - they plan - to escape retribution if they can achieve everlasting rule by the gun.
There is not much more to be said, but here is a little history: a review of the words spoken by one of his own former guerrilla commanders speaks loudly, decades later of the perceptions of the liberation fighters about the negative features of rule by the gun.
"Recalling his transfer from the military into the political arena of the Party (ZANU PF) Robson [Manyika] says: `We were aware that politics comes first; the military is born from politics. After the war, we reform. The Party CONTROLS the gun [his emphasis], the gun does not control the party' ".
(interviewed by me, Diana Mitchell, for "African Nationalist Leaders in Zimbabwe Whos Who” 1980"
That surely might be how the cunning Mugabe got to rule the gun. A number of former military men, good men, have died `in suspicious circumstances’ throughout Mugabe’s rule. Clearly Manyika’s words needed closer attention. Could he have known that Mugabe, formerly ZANLA’s Commander-in-Chief, although never holding the gun himself, would continue to direct the gun while pretending to have transferred himself - transformed himself rather - to lead the triumphant ZANU (PF) party?
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
There is not much more to be said, but here is a little history: a review of the words spoken by one of his own former guerrilla commanders speaks loudly, decades later of the perceptions of the liberation fighters about the negative features of rule by the gun.
"Recalling his transfer from the military into the political arena of the Party (ZANU PF) Robson [Manyika] says: `We were aware that politics comes first; the military is born from politics. After the war, we reform. The Party CONTROLS the gun [his emphasis], the gun does not control the party' ".
(interviewed by me, Diana Mitchell, for "African Nationalist Leaders in Zimbabwe Whos Who” 1980"
That surely might be how the cunning Mugabe got to rule the gun. A number of former military men, good men, have died `in suspicious circumstances’ throughout Mugabe’s rule. Clearly Manyika’s words needed closer attention. Could he have known that Mugabe, formerly ZANLA’s Commander-in-Chief, although never holding the gun himself, would continue to direct the gun while pretending to have transferred himself - transformed himself rather - to lead the triumphant ZANU (PF) party?
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
"Barbaric" says Mugabe
Yes, Mr ex-President Mugabe. You have chosen the right word:
`Mugabe, who faces MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai in a presidential run-off on June 27 described the violence as "barbaric" (Mail & Guardian (SA) 3 June 08).
Barbaric, is undeniably the description of your own followers' current misbehaviour. You will have to wear that label yourself, tied to your toe, unless you can stop the cruel punishment of your own, brave people for voting against you. When your generals say that Tsvangirai will never rule, when your wife says he will never enter state house, when you boast of "degrees in violence" and you continue in denial of your well-deserved loss of power in the recent general elections, nobody needs to be very clever to conclude that the ongoing barbarism is indirectly your responsibility.
You spoke at a world food crisis summit in Rome on June 3, 2008. The barbarians destroyed Rome in the 5th century A.D. In the 21st century, Robert Mugabe, a disgraced former liberation fighter, who can be seen by the world as a spokesman for a clique of barbarians taking their orders from him, has entered the gates of Rome. Without your bullying, murderous militia, your suborned police,your disgraceful generals and your pathetic, juvenile `war vets' you confronted world leaders whose facial expressions, as revealed on television, betrayed no great fear of a balmy little leader of bone-headed and greedy barbaric hordes.
Shame on the UN for allowing you to display in that great, rebuilt city of Rome your utter ignorance of history, modern economics and your personal spite against a civilized, post-colonial western world.
"... The barbarians, who destroyed Rome, destroyed it to take its wealth not its knowledge...
...The shortage of farmers led to Romans depending on foreign nations for food, a basic staple of life. During this anarchy, civilization deteriorated to its most basic level"(Mega Essays.com).
Your destroyed Zimbabwe has no shortage of farmers as such; the shortage is of wealth. Your craven cronies have stolen the nation's human and material wealth built up over a relatively short 120 years. Even your most ardent African admirers are not
able to comprehend the depths to which you have brought a once-prosperous nation.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
`Mugabe, who faces MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai in a presidential run-off on June 27 described the violence as "barbaric" (Mail & Guardian (SA) 3 June 08).
Barbaric, is undeniably the description of your own followers' current misbehaviour. You will have to wear that label yourself, tied to your toe, unless you can stop the cruel punishment of your own, brave people for voting against you. When your generals say that Tsvangirai will never rule, when your wife says he will never enter state house, when you boast of "degrees in violence" and you continue in denial of your well-deserved loss of power in the recent general elections, nobody needs to be very clever to conclude that the ongoing barbarism is indirectly your responsibility.
You spoke at a world food crisis summit in Rome on June 3, 2008. The barbarians destroyed Rome in the 5th century A.D. In the 21st century, Robert Mugabe, a disgraced former liberation fighter, who can be seen by the world as a spokesman for a clique of barbarians taking their orders from him, has entered the gates of Rome. Without your bullying, murderous militia, your suborned police,your disgraceful generals and your pathetic, juvenile `war vets' you confronted world leaders whose facial expressions, as revealed on television, betrayed no great fear of a balmy little leader of bone-headed and greedy barbaric hordes.
Shame on the UN for allowing you to display in that great, rebuilt city of Rome your utter ignorance of history, modern economics and your personal spite against a civilized, post-colonial western world.
"... The barbarians, who destroyed Rome, destroyed it to take its wealth not its knowledge...
...The shortage of farmers led to Romans depending on foreign nations for food, a basic staple of life. During this anarchy, civilization deteriorated to its most basic level"(Mega Essays.com).
Your destroyed Zimbabwe has no shortage of farmers as such; the shortage is of wealth. Your craven cronies have stolen the nation's human and material wealth built up over a relatively short 120 years. Even your most ardent African admirers are not
able to comprehend the depths to which you have brought a once-prosperous nation.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
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