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
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Monday, October 2, 2006
Darfur: More than meets the eye?
The question mark in my title should make it clear that I have only just begun to understand what the Sudanese tragedy, encapsulated under the single word `Darfur' could really mean for Africa.
For a long time I have viewed Darfur mostly through television as a desert hosting refugees, where indescribable human suffering goes on unabated and nobody, not even the AU, can do anything about it. And that, it seemed, was that; nothing much about the underlying motives of the Sudanese government in the north except its apparent determination to wipe out black Africans in the south. Since Arabs predominate in the north you would think it was racism and Africans in recent history have experienced incalculable doses of racism - more than any other race I can think of except the Jews - at the hands of other races. But when I read Charles Moore's piece, This is why there is slaughter in Darfur in the Daily Telegraph of September 26 a bright light seemed to shine in a previously very dark place in my mind. I didn't know (and how many people do?) that the CPA (Comprehensive Peace Agreement) between the north and south Sudan has a key provision for the settling of the borders. The north "knows that if the borders are agreed, this will show clearly that most of the oilfields which earn the country large amounts of hard currency are in the south". The oil revenues are controlled by the north and the south believes it is "being. short-changed. This suits China which is in the country helping itself to to Sudanese oil at good prices" according to Moore. And there is more (sorry) I can do no better than to quote his key points in full: "Southern Sudan is all but unique in the modern world in having recently overthrown sharia rule. After yearsof officially imposed Islam ... Christians no longer have to live in daily fear... mosques and churches now co-exist peacefully. Yet one Anglican prelate ...said that he survived 20 years of persecution ... he told me that the Arab Muslim is not a giving up sort of person'. The blow to Arab pride if the south became independent would be tremendous. The threat to the south is therefore, huge. `We are the wall to the penetration of the Islamic religion to the whole of Africa,' Bishop Micah said. What occurs in Darfur concerns not only the fate of its refugee, raped, hungry, dispossessed people. The outcome will also tell the north whether it can get away with what it wants. If it discovers that it can, it will start on the much bigger prize of the south". Is everybody out there listening?
Its a long, long journey, far further south to the Sub-Saharan Africa that I know. I was born on African soil and lived there for seven decades. That continent has a great pull on my imagination even though there is not a drop of blood in my veins that is not English. Willie Musararwa, a Shona sage and a valued friend in Zimbabwe (formerly Christianized Southern Rhodesia) used to call me mwana wevhu (child of the soil). That, in his language, was a gentle compliment. He knew that the soil which nurtured me had made Africa a part of me. Darfur is in Africa so it is also a part of me.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
For a long time I have viewed Darfur mostly through television as a desert hosting refugees, where indescribable human suffering goes on unabated and nobody, not even the AU, can do anything about it. And that, it seemed, was that; nothing much about the underlying motives of the Sudanese government in the north except its apparent determination to wipe out black Africans in the south. Since Arabs predominate in the north you would think it was racism and Africans in recent history have experienced incalculable doses of racism - more than any other race I can think of except the Jews - at the hands of other races. But when I read Charles Moore's piece, This is why there is slaughter in Darfur in the Daily Telegraph of September 26 a bright light seemed to shine in a previously very dark place in my mind. I didn't know (and how many people do?) that the CPA (Comprehensive Peace Agreement) between the north and south Sudan has a key provision for the settling of the borders. The north "knows that if the borders are agreed, this will show clearly that most of the oilfields which earn the country large amounts of hard currency are in the south". The oil revenues are controlled by the north and the south believes it is "being. short-changed. This suits China which is in the country helping itself to to Sudanese oil at good prices" according to Moore. And there is more (sorry) I can do no better than to quote his key points in full: "Southern Sudan is all but unique in the modern world in having recently overthrown sharia rule. After yearsof officially imposed Islam ... Christians no longer have to live in daily fear... mosques and churches now co-exist peacefully. Yet one Anglican prelate ...said that he survived 20 years of persecution ... he told me that the Arab Muslim is not a giving up sort of person'. The blow to Arab pride if the south became independent would be tremendous. The threat to the south is therefore, huge. `We are the wall to the penetration of the Islamic religion to the whole of Africa,' Bishop Micah said. What occurs in Darfur concerns not only the fate of its refugee, raped, hungry, dispossessed people. The outcome will also tell the north whether it can get away with what it wants. If it discovers that it can, it will start on the much bigger prize of the south". Is everybody out there listening?
Its a long, long journey, far further south to the Sub-Saharan Africa that I know. I was born on African soil and lived there for seven decades. That continent has a great pull on my imagination even though there is not a drop of blood in my veins that is not English. Willie Musararwa, a Shona sage and a valued friend in Zimbabwe (formerly Christianized Southern Rhodesia) used to call me mwana wevhu (child of the soil). That, in his language, was a gentle compliment. He knew that the soil which nurtured me had made Africa a part of me. Darfur is in Africa so it is also a part of me.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
A THOUSAND STEVE BIKOS IN ZIMBABWE
When South African Steve Biko protested against the tyranny of the state in the years before Freedom dawned, he was beaten to a pulp and he died. Many others who were prepared to face the callous might of state machinery suffered terribly after protesting bravely on behalf of fellow oppressed. Their suffering was not in vain. The international outcry made of Steve Biko a national hero and over time and the names of hundreds of others have entered the pantheon of South Africa's martyrs.
Why is it then that even in Africa the brutality of Zimbabwe's state machinery goes unchecked? Is it because Dafur, Afghanistan and Iraq are presently preoccupying the good people of the world who make it their business to intervene in severe cases of state tyranny? Where does the African Union stand on the recent state directed assaults on trade union leaders whose bravery in taking to the streets on behalf of their starving fellow citizens is as great as any in history? The AU is too weak to mount rescue operation - its ineffectual attempt even at peacekeeping in Dafur is proof enough of that.
There are a thousand Steve Bikos buried in Zimbabwe: murdered by fellow Zimbabweans, not by colonial oppressors or settler minority elites. If the United Nations is paralysed by Sudan's Bashir who `refuses' its intervention where are the resolutions on behalf of Zimbabwe's pitiable people? Why do we hear nothing but the sound of silence from the AU?
Read
Why is it then that even in Africa the brutality of Zimbabwe's state machinery goes unchecked? Is it because Dafur, Afghanistan and Iraq are presently preoccupying the good people of the world who make it their business to intervene in severe cases of state tyranny? Where does the African Union stand on the recent state directed assaults on trade union leaders whose bravery in taking to the streets on behalf of their starving fellow citizens is as great as any in history? The AU is too weak to mount rescue operation - its ineffectual attempt even at peacekeeping in Dafur is proof enough of that.
There are a thousand Steve Bikos buried in Zimbabwe: murdered by fellow Zimbabweans, not by colonial oppressors or settler minority elites. If the United Nations is paralysed by Sudan's Bashir who `refuses' its intervention where are the resolutions on behalf of Zimbabwe's pitiable people? Why do we hear nothing but the sound of silence from the AU?
Read
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Coming back to blogging
I missed the whole of August and there was so much going on that I am ashamed of my lethargy. I have at last got around to disposing of my huge collection of documents hoisted over here to England and I suppose I should say that is a good enough excuse for drying up on this blogging thing. Not the same as writer's block since there is no publisher in view - only my friends and family and an occasional, curious reader of these commentaries on things present and recollections of things past.
Now I have carelessly broken my left elbow - been dragged off my feet by a very large dog I walk occasionally. So this has to be short.
The longer the time lapse since last I saw Zimbabwe, the more it seems that the politicians - wherever you look- are not doing much to be admired. I look forward to change in England now, but not as desperately, nor half as fearfully as we who love that African soil look forward to change in Zimbabwe.
That's it for now
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Now I have carelessly broken my left elbow - been dragged off my feet by a very large dog I walk occasionally. So this has to be short.
The longer the time lapse since last I saw Zimbabwe, the more it seems that the politicians - wherever you look- are not doing much to be admired. I look forward to change in England now, but not as desperately, nor half as fearfully as we who love that African soil look forward to change in Zimbabwe.
That's it for now
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Monday, July 31, 2006
DIGGING UP THE PAST
My postwars experiences
Enos Nkala, one of the last surviving founders of Zimbabwean nationalist parties is going to dig up some very smelly political bones in a book to be posthumously published, he says. I wonder if I will live to see it. If he has any sense he will be sending his MS off to a safe place even as he writes, or we shall be visiting his forensic laboratory sooner rather than later.
A less parochial past has grabbed my attention this month. I have just returned from Berlin - that great city so magnificently restored after being flattened in WW2. My hosts had memories of Berlin before, during and after the war. Klaus is a gentle doctor (retired), still internally wounded by what happened in his country: "We shall never be forgiven," was his quiet expression of sorrow. His wife, Ushie, also a retired professional, is in love with her little private garden. Five miles from her gracious old house in a Berlin suburb which was spared from the bombing, it had been badly neglected in those cold war years when situated on the wrong side of the Berlin wall. Now we visited it almost daily to save it from the searing, near-forty degree heat of an unusual European summer.
Like my friend Ushie, I was very young when the war started. My experience as a colonial child of the British empire was to hear the dreadful news of the bombing of great cities and the cruelties inflicted on civilian populations - hers was to live in fear of Russian reprisals. I never dreamed that sixty years on I would be trying to comfort my German friends, reminding them that Time heals everything when living memory has passed. Meanwhile they refuse to forget and took me off (entirely their choice)to see how painfully Germany still scrapes at the scars the nation inflicted on Jewish people.
We we refreshed our spirits with a visit to the dredged up remains of a fabulous Egyptian civilization exhibited at Gropius museum. The eathquake that buried it beneath the sea 3250 years ago left the solid evidence of fabulous statuary and artifacts, gold jewellery and coins. None of the evil that must surely have lurked, as it always has, beneath an outward show of wealth and power, has survived. Only the hieroglyphs tell the story and none can say what has been left out. So it will be after our civilization is swallowed up. If it sinks beneath deep waters, everything but stone and gems will rot. There is some comfort in this thought, especially for the survivors of 20th century wars.
I wrote a lighter memoir of my visit and will publish it tomorrow - if my browser doesn't go on the blink again!)
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Enos Nkala, one of the last surviving founders of Zimbabwean nationalist parties is going to dig up some very smelly political bones in a book to be posthumously published, he says. I wonder if I will live to see it. If he has any sense he will be sending his MS off to a safe place even as he writes, or we shall be visiting his forensic laboratory sooner rather than later.
A less parochial past has grabbed my attention this month. I have just returned from Berlin - that great city so magnificently restored after being flattened in WW2. My hosts had memories of Berlin before, during and after the war. Klaus is a gentle doctor (retired), still internally wounded by what happened in his country: "We shall never be forgiven," was his quiet expression of sorrow. His wife, Ushie, also a retired professional, is in love with her little private garden. Five miles from her gracious old house in a Berlin suburb which was spared from the bombing, it had been badly neglected in those cold war years when situated on the wrong side of the Berlin wall. Now we visited it almost daily to save it from the searing, near-forty degree heat of an unusual European summer.
Like my friend Ushie, I was very young when the war started. My experience as a colonial child of the British empire was to hear the dreadful news of the bombing of great cities and the cruelties inflicted on civilian populations - hers was to live in fear of Russian reprisals. I never dreamed that sixty years on I would be trying to comfort my German friends, reminding them that Time heals everything when living memory has passed. Meanwhile they refuse to forget and took me off (entirely their choice)to see how painfully Germany still scrapes at the scars the nation inflicted on Jewish people.
We we refreshed our spirits with a visit to the dredged up remains of a fabulous Egyptian civilization exhibited at Gropius museum. The eathquake that buried it beneath the sea 3250 years ago left the solid evidence of fabulous statuary and artifacts, gold jewellery and coins. None of the evil that must surely have lurked, as it always has, beneath an outward show of wealth and power, has survived. Only the hieroglyphs tell the story and none can say what has been left out. So it will be after our civilization is swallowed up. If it sinks beneath deep waters, everything but stone and gems will rot. There is some comfort in this thought, especially for the survivors of 20th century wars.
I wrote a lighter memoir of my visit and will publish it tomorrow - if my browser doesn't go on the blink again!)
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Thursday, July 13, 2006
WHAT HAPPENED TO `LOOKING EAST' IN ZIMBABWE?
> >
CHINESE BUSES
I wrote this article last year for publication in `The Zimbabwean' and having a look at it now, a year on decided to edit it and update it(since I reserve the right to use my own copyright)When I get my website up and running I shall repeat it there too for maximum exposure. Why do I do it? Because I must.
> > Zimbabwe's silver jubilee came and went last year and a jubilant
> > President strutted and fretted upon the stage at the National
> > Sports Stadium in Harare. He had made it very clear even before he and
> > his ZANU (PF) were nearly dismissed in 2000 by his own internal
> > Opposition that he hates the West. He loves the East (in the broadest,
> > political and cultural – and now economic - sense) and aims to shake
> > off, discard, trash or otherwise remove the remnants of a hated (for
> > him) age of British imperialism in a new Zimbabwe which he and his kin
> > will rule forever. It is also well known that in thumbing his nose at
> > white `settlers' he once had the admiration and covert or overt
> > support of every person of his generation who suffered the humiliation
> > of `imperialist' occupation of African soil. Possibly he was admired
> > beyond Africa - wherever full human rights were not accorded to the
> > indigenous people. At home, the history and causation of all this
> > needs no going over here because, at long last, Robert Mugabe has
> > turned his back on the past. But he is facing what he perceives as a
> > new dawn. "We have turned east, where the sun rises, and given our
> > back to the West, where the sun sets" he says.
> >
> > Mugabe was imprisoned for demanding (most eloquently) `majority rule'
> > and freedom from the`settler oppression' of black people which would
> > flow from that. The well-informed, the liberals and all Africa's
> > subject peoples understood, then, his vitriol, aimed at his country's
> > overlords, formerly the British and later, their settler descendants.
> > But is his naked hatred still in vogue - beyond the limits of certain
> > rulers of African states? Hating the West, he pretends that China will
> > take up where the West left off. The `West', including many nations
> > which had played no part in colonizing Africa, generously assisted
> > Independent Zimbabwe with development programmes. Aid, including money
> > donated and loaned, industrial goods, training, and advanced
> > technology flowed freely from the West. Trade was a normal component
> > of bi-lateral agreements. The Chinese were more keenly interested in
> > sales (or barter) of their manufactures. (See The Zimbabwean's leading
> > article, April 22, 2005, by editor Wilf Mbanga) And here is Alister Sparkes,
> > veteran SA journalist's view:
> >
> > "Mugabe's notion of "looking East" is simply part of [the] great
> > illusion. China is an emerging superpower with a hunger for mineral
> > resources, of which Zimbabwe has a modest amount. But China is not in
> > the business of granting aid to developing countries" (The Star 20
> > April).
> >
> > An insight into the preoccupations of struggling Zimbabweans is one I
> > picked up in ZWNEWS, (20 April) from a story of a Harare man [who]
> > was asked if he had not attended the Independence celebrations at the
> > National Sports Stadium because he felt there was little to celebrate.
> > "No. It was because I couldn't find petrol." "But the government had
> > laid on buses from the usual pick-up points." "I didn't know that."
> > "But they were announced on the radio." "I don't listen to
> > that...radio any more." After a while, the first man said: "Come to
> > think of it, you would not have fitted into the buses anyway." "Why
> > not?" "You are too tall. They are Chinese buses."
> >
> > Unfortunately, while fighting the liberation war, Mugabe climbed
> > aboard a bus carrying a large proportion of the world to a Communist
> > Valhalla. On board were Europe's Eastern bloc and other Communist,
> > anti-West friends. The Communist Chinese, no friends of the Capitalist
> > West, were assisting in the training and arming of nationalists and
> > their fighting forces in the run up to the guerrilla warfare which
> > erupted on Rhodesia's borders during the period of the Cold War. Now
> > both wars are over. The Soviet Union is no more and the Chinese are
> > more friendly towards the West (and vice-versa). Trading and `jaw jaw'
> > rather than `war war' has brought old enemies and former political
> > rivals into new relationships, changing the world's economic
> > frontiers. Even Mugabe's anti-Western friend, the now retired
> > President Mahathir of Malaysia no longer directs his poison into the
> > Zimbabwe `king's' ear. Cuba's Castro is old and in a class of his own,
> > while North Korea's Kim Il Jong is very isolated. Independent and
> > sovereign Zimbabwe, the once `non-aligned' nation has no real enemies
> > in any sphere. Mugabe, the old warrior seems to be lost without them.
> > There is no one left to fight against except his own people.
> >
> > The point of this article, however, is to pick up on Mugabe's
> > declaration that Zimbabwe's future lies with the East and his promise
> > to dump the West in a sort of zero-sum shift in foreign policy. Surely
> > he should first listen to the views of Zimbabweans who are being told
> > that they will be the beneficiaries of this sea change. A serious,
> > national debate on the issue has never been presented. Without freedom
> > of expression in Zimbabwe itself, this debate will, perforce, be
> > carried in foreign newspapers - mostly Western because Zimbabweans
> > cannot read Chinese or any other `Eastern' language. `The Zimbabwean'
> > editor, Wilf Mbanga, has opened a window of opportunity for wide
> > ranging views from Zimbabweans, keeping alive the flame of their
> > freedom and national identity in many parts of the world. We should
> > join this debate in earnest.
> >
> > As for re-colonization, Mugabe's big bogey, Zimbabwe elections since
> > 2000 have shown that in spite of the absence of anything resembling a
> > fair debate, a new generation of Zimbabweans who have never
> > experienced any form of oppression from `settlers' are educated
> > enough, or just wise enough to recognise the fact that they face being
> > `recolonized' by a new minority group. This is the Zezuru, clan (never
> > use theword `tribe') from which Mugabe descends, through his father,
> > Gabriel, (a `real Gushungu' from Zvimba, according to James Chikerema,
> > a close relative).
Not an awful lot has changed in a year except that Chikerema has died and the country, lacking massive investments from old friends in the East, or new ones for that matter is still going economically down the tubes.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
CHINESE BUSES
I wrote this article last year for publication in `The Zimbabwean' and having a look at it now, a year on decided to edit it and update it(since I reserve the right to use my own copyright)When I get my website up and running I shall repeat it there too for maximum exposure. Why do I do it? Because I must.
> > Zimbabwe's silver jubilee came and went last year and a jubilant
> > President strutted and fretted upon the stage at the National
> > Sports Stadium in Harare. He had made it very clear even before he and
> > his ZANU (PF) were nearly dismissed in 2000 by his own internal
> > Opposition that he hates the West. He loves the East (in the broadest,
> > political and cultural – and now economic - sense) and aims to shake
> > off, discard, trash or otherwise remove the remnants of a hated (for
> > him) age of British imperialism in a new Zimbabwe which he and his kin
> > will rule forever. It is also well known that in thumbing his nose at
> > white `settlers' he once had the admiration and covert or overt
> > support of every person of his generation who suffered the humiliation
> > of `imperialist' occupation of African soil. Possibly he was admired
> > beyond Africa - wherever full human rights were not accorded to the
> > indigenous people. At home, the history and causation of all this
> > needs no going over here because, at long last, Robert Mugabe has
> > turned his back on the past. But he is facing what he perceives as a
> > new dawn. "We have turned east, where the sun rises, and given our
> > back to the West, where the sun sets" he says.
> >
> > Mugabe was imprisoned for demanding (most eloquently) `majority rule'
> > and freedom from the`settler oppression' of black people which would
> > flow from that. The well-informed, the liberals and all Africa's
> > subject peoples understood, then, his vitriol, aimed at his country's
> > overlords, formerly the British and later, their settler descendants.
> > But is his naked hatred still in vogue - beyond the limits of certain
> > rulers of African states? Hating the West, he pretends that China will
> > take up where the West left off. The `West', including many nations
> > which had played no part in colonizing Africa, generously assisted
> > Independent Zimbabwe with development programmes. Aid, including money
> > donated and loaned, industrial goods, training, and advanced
> > technology flowed freely from the West. Trade was a normal component
> > of bi-lateral agreements. The Chinese were more keenly interested in
> > sales (or barter) of their manufactures. (See The Zimbabwean's leading
> > article, April 22, 2005, by editor Wilf Mbanga) And here is Alister Sparkes,
> > veteran SA journalist's view:
> >
> > "Mugabe's notion of "looking East" is simply part of [the] great
> > illusion. China is an emerging superpower with a hunger for mineral
> > resources, of which Zimbabwe has a modest amount. But China is not in
> > the business of granting aid to developing countries" (The Star 20
> > April).
> >
> > An insight into the preoccupations of struggling Zimbabweans is one I
> > picked up in ZWNEWS, (20 April) from a story of a Harare man [who]
> > was asked if he had not attended the Independence celebrations at the
> > National Sports Stadium because he felt there was little to celebrate.
> > "No. It was because I couldn't find petrol." "But the government had
> > laid on buses from the usual pick-up points." "I didn't know that."
> > "But they were announced on the radio." "I don't listen to
> > that...radio any more." After a while, the first man said: "Come to
> > think of it, you would not have fitted into the buses anyway." "Why
> > not?" "You are too tall. They are Chinese buses."
> >
> > Unfortunately, while fighting the liberation war, Mugabe climbed
> > aboard a bus carrying a large proportion of the world to a Communist
> > Valhalla. On board were Europe's Eastern bloc and other Communist,
> > anti-West friends. The Communist Chinese, no friends of the Capitalist
> > West, were assisting in the training and arming of nationalists and
> > their fighting forces in the run up to the guerrilla warfare which
> > erupted on Rhodesia's borders during the period of the Cold War. Now
> > both wars are over. The Soviet Union is no more and the Chinese are
> > more friendly towards the West (and vice-versa). Trading and `jaw jaw'
> > rather than `war war' has brought old enemies and former political
> > rivals into new relationships, changing the world's economic
> > frontiers. Even Mugabe's anti-Western friend, the now retired
> > President Mahathir of Malaysia no longer directs his poison into the
> > Zimbabwe `king's' ear. Cuba's Castro is old and in a class of his own,
> > while North Korea's Kim Il Jong is very isolated. Independent and
> > sovereign Zimbabwe, the once `non-aligned' nation has no real enemies
> > in any sphere. Mugabe, the old warrior seems to be lost without them.
> > There is no one left to fight against except his own people.
> >
> > The point of this article, however, is to pick up on Mugabe's
> > declaration that Zimbabwe's future lies with the East and his promise
> > to dump the West in a sort of zero-sum shift in foreign policy. Surely
> > he should first listen to the views of Zimbabweans who are being told
> > that they will be the beneficiaries of this sea change. A serious,
> > national debate on the issue has never been presented. Without freedom
> > of expression in Zimbabwe itself, this debate will, perforce, be
> > carried in foreign newspapers - mostly Western because Zimbabweans
> > cannot read Chinese or any other `Eastern' language. `The Zimbabwean'
> > editor, Wilf Mbanga, has opened a window of opportunity for wide
> > ranging views from Zimbabweans, keeping alive the flame of their
> > freedom and national identity in many parts of the world. We should
> > join this debate in earnest.
> >
> > As for re-colonization, Mugabe's big bogey, Zimbabwe elections since
> > 2000 have shown that in spite of the absence of anything resembling a
> > fair debate, a new generation of Zimbabweans who have never
> > experienced any form of oppression from `settlers' are educated
> > enough, or just wise enough to recognise the fact that they face being
> > `recolonized' by a new minority group. This is the Zezuru, clan (never
> > use theword `tribe') from which Mugabe descends, through his father,
> > Gabriel, (a `real Gushungu' from Zvimba, according to James Chikerema,
> > a close relative).
Not an awful lot has changed in a year except that Chikerema has died and the country, lacking massive investments from old friends in the East, or new ones for that matter is still going economically down the tubes.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Monday, July 3, 2006
MODELS OF GOOD THINKING ABOUT THE LAW LORDS AND THE FOURTH OF JULY
Lucky, as it turned out yesterday we were out of onions. So I braved the heat and walked to Sainsbury's. I picked up The Sunday Times, almost straining my right arm in the process. After dumping a lot of heavy paper I was struck by the headlines and content of two thoughtful pieces on the leader page. Oh joy! Andrew Sullivan and Simon Jenkins have thrown a bright, shining light where, for me, in this age of anti-terrorist over-reaction on both sides of the Atlantic, there has been a fog of uncertainty about the political performances of Bush and Blair. `The founding fathers save America's soul' says Sullivan. Of course! Its the constitution, stupid. Jenkins' article, focused on Britain, tells us that `Judges cut through the hysteria of rulers made tyrants by fear'. They are talking about American and British responses in dealing with stepped-up international terrorism. Sullivan warns of the consequence of an overkill being counterproductive or a threat to US democracy. Jenkins says that without the constraints of the constitution in the US, with its separation of powers and without similar constraints emanating from the wisdom of the British law lords here in the UK, our democracies are in peril. Their possible demise has loomed large since 9/11 and 7/7 in the US and UK respectively. Until I was reassured by the views of these two thinkers, I had begun to wonder if the end of our world was nigh.
We have already faced, in our former homeland, Zimbabwe, the consequences of the abandonment of the rule of law. Where the constitution sought to guard our freedoms, the ruling party simply changed it. The Mugabe regime manipulated electoral law, while almost simultaneously removing the powers of the judiciary to counter impunity. This was done to sustain the necessary majority of the ruling ZANU (PF)party in parliament and has ultimately brought the constitution and the law into contempt.
There is a parallel here with regard to Bush messing with the the law;a close call on 'constitutional propriety 'for Americans. Sullivan asserts that `...new conservatives are contemptuous of constitutional propriety and limited government' The battle (for the rule of law)is still on in America and he writes,`What will ultimately decide this battle for the soul of America will be the people who elect their own representatives to check the president. The court is as evenly balanced as it has ever been.'
In Zimbabwe, Mugabe's judges have, in the majority, already been bought and sold. Just take a good look the consequences for ordinary Zimbabweans.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
We have already faced, in our former homeland, Zimbabwe, the consequences of the abandonment of the rule of law. Where the constitution sought to guard our freedoms, the ruling party simply changed it. The Mugabe regime manipulated electoral law, while almost simultaneously removing the powers of the judiciary to counter impunity. This was done to sustain the necessary majority of the ruling ZANU (PF)party in parliament and has ultimately brought the constitution and the law into contempt.
There is a parallel here with regard to Bush messing with the the law;a close call on 'constitutional propriety 'for Americans. Sullivan asserts that `...new conservatives are contemptuous of constitutional propriety and limited government' The battle (for the rule of law)is still on in America and he writes,`What will ultimately decide this battle for the soul of America will be the people who elect their own representatives to check the president. The court is as evenly balanced as it has ever been.'
In Zimbabwe, Mugabe's judges have, in the majority, already been bought and sold. Just take a good look the consequences for ordinary Zimbabweans.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
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