Isn't it too ghastly for words to have to face the fact that Robert Mugabe's personal escape from his just deserts may yet come about because of the very depths of depravity to which his ZANU (PF) regime has plunged?
A writer called Yarik Turianskyi whose question "Will Robert Mugabe face trial?" I noted on ZWNEWS yesterday, concludes that the answer may be a reluctant "Yes"
Certainly, the people who have suffered grievously at his hands, indirectly, we assume, through his abominable lieutenants would find it almost impossible to forgive him. It seems that you can get away with murder, as long as your victims are legion.
Auschwitz and concentration camps the world over have shown skeletal victims of the cruelty that humans (can we call them that?) visit upon each other. "How terrible! How wicked! This must never happen again!" we exclaim. And then we have gone back to our business, and we have let it happen again. Zimbabwean victims of Robert Mugabe are starving in a country capable of feeding not only inself but most of sub-Saharan Africa too.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Acquaintance with David Steel
This is not a trumpet blowing exercise and I have hesitated with the title. This is because my old friend Heidi Holland titled her book `Dinner with Mugabe' about the man whose ignominious life touched us both very profoundly. She explained that it was really a dinner FOR Mugabe that brought her briefly within arms reach of her subject. In my case, I reminisce, vaingloriously about attending a dinner with a group of opposition politicians in former Rhodesia with Sir David Steel more than thirty years ago.
David Steel, leader of Britain's Liberal Party in 1976, appeared on BBC television's `Empire's Children' this evening. The program took me back to the year 1977 (if I remember rightly) when he visited Rhodesia. It was at a time when a flurry of VIPs from Britain and America were calling in to meet the country's political leaders and members of a formal opposition party of which I was an executive member. He found time to meet members of the National Unifying Force, a party I helped to found towards the end of my long and unsuccessful quest to defeat the Rhodesian Front at the polls. I remember Steel as young, dark haired, keenly intelligent and an earnest enquirer into the complexities of Rhodesia's rebellious and illegal status as a former British colony. We exchanged a few words but it was only through today's TV revelation that I discovered that a little his life's experience has been linked with gossamer-thin threads to my own.
For starters, I too am one of Empire's children but Steel's reminiscences are of Kenya, a kind of `sister-colony to the Rhodesia where I was born and where I lived for 70 years. David Steel the younger lived in Africa until he was twelve years old and his Empire story reveals him in a journey of re-discovery of the important episode in Kenya of his hugely respected father, also David Steel, a Presbyterian Minister of St Andrew's Church in Nairobi. The Rev. Steel spoke out powerfully and bravely against the colonial government's harsh treatment meted out to Kenya's blacks at the time of Kenya's `emergency' when the majority (mostly Kikuyu) took to the warpath, led by the Mau Mau. It was a very violent time and the BBC's photographs shown on the programme left viewers in no doubt of that.
My late brother, also a David, was a forensic photographer in the Kenya Police during that time and I felt sure that he took some of those pictures. He carried a collection of them and showed them to me when he left Kenya, horrified and embittered about an Africa he had loved and lived in for his first quarter century. David Steel's journey of enquiry into the past told me much that I needed to know about that period of colonial history. Much of it chimes with Rhodesia's story of African nationalist struggle to repossess the land. No Mau Mau-type oaths there, but many more violent deaths - many thousands of blacks and a couple of thousand whites in Zimbabwe's struggle for independence. I joined with a minority of Rhodesia's whites in an effort to deflect Ian Smith's RF party from the path of war. As in Kenya, there were brave and outspoken Christians in Rhodesia: the Catholic Bishop Lamont, Anglican Rev Sam Wood, Methodists, the Rev. Fred Rea and Ken Mew to name a few.
I looked up David Steel's biography in Wikipedia and noted with interest that he succeeded the disgraced Jeremy Thorpe as Party leader. I met Jeremy Thorpe (over two lunches, no dinners), when he visited Rhodesia to see his old school friend who was my political mentor, Jeremy Broome. Even more interesting: I learned that Steel and David Owen, another, more powerful British politician whom we (opposition to Smith) met in Rhodesia was closely linked, not always amicably, with David Steel's political party life.
Finally, after meeting many and various of his father's admirers, inclluding a group of ancients who remain bouond in solidarity together in a Mau Mau veterans association, David Steel is recorded most recently searching the Kenyan National Archives in Kenya in order to learn more of his illustrius father's life in that colony. He discovers an impressive collection of letters revealing Rev. Steel's struggle with British officials on behalf of his African flock.
This last puts me in mind of the fact that I must hasten to see that my papers (the lifetime collection of an ancient, `colonial relic') - both personal and political - must continue to be safely stored. The first twenty years from 1962 when the Rhodesian Front came to power in Rhodesia are safely archived at my old Cape Town University; the next twenty, to 2003 will soon be on their way to the Hoover Institution at Stanford in America. Insignificant though my personal role in the greater scheme of Zimbabwe's history might have been, there are often many marked down truths from long-gone witnesses to be found in carefully preserved documents, wherever they may be.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
David Steel, leader of Britain's Liberal Party in 1976, appeared on BBC television's `Empire's Children' this evening. The program took me back to the year 1977 (if I remember rightly) when he visited Rhodesia. It was at a time when a flurry of VIPs from Britain and America were calling in to meet the country's political leaders and members of a formal opposition party of which I was an executive member. He found time to meet members of the National Unifying Force, a party I helped to found towards the end of my long and unsuccessful quest to defeat the Rhodesian Front at the polls. I remember Steel as young, dark haired, keenly intelligent and an earnest enquirer into the complexities of Rhodesia's rebellious and illegal status as a former British colony. We exchanged a few words but it was only through today's TV revelation that I discovered that a little his life's experience has been linked with gossamer-thin threads to my own.
For starters, I too am one of Empire's children but Steel's reminiscences are of Kenya, a kind of `sister-colony to the Rhodesia where I was born and where I lived for 70 years. David Steel the younger lived in Africa until he was twelve years old and his Empire story reveals him in a journey of re-discovery of the important episode in Kenya of his hugely respected father, also David Steel, a Presbyterian Minister of St Andrew's Church in Nairobi. The Rev. Steel spoke out powerfully and bravely against the colonial government's harsh treatment meted out to Kenya's blacks at the time of Kenya's `emergency' when the majority (mostly Kikuyu) took to the warpath, led by the Mau Mau. It was a very violent time and the BBC's photographs shown on the programme left viewers in no doubt of that.
My late brother, also a David, was a forensic photographer in the Kenya Police during that time and I felt sure that he took some of those pictures. He carried a collection of them and showed them to me when he left Kenya, horrified and embittered about an Africa he had loved and lived in for his first quarter century. David Steel's journey of enquiry into the past told me much that I needed to know about that period of colonial history. Much of it chimes with Rhodesia's story of African nationalist struggle to repossess the land. No Mau Mau-type oaths there, but many more violent deaths - many thousands of blacks and a couple of thousand whites in Zimbabwe's struggle for independence. I joined with a minority of Rhodesia's whites in an effort to deflect Ian Smith's RF party from the path of war. As in Kenya, there were brave and outspoken Christians in Rhodesia: the Catholic Bishop Lamont, Anglican Rev Sam Wood, Methodists, the Rev. Fred Rea and Ken Mew to name a few.
I looked up David Steel's biography in Wikipedia and noted with interest that he succeeded the disgraced Jeremy Thorpe as Party leader. I met Jeremy Thorpe (over two lunches, no dinners), when he visited Rhodesia to see his old school friend who was my political mentor, Jeremy Broome. Even more interesting: I learned that Steel and David Owen, another, more powerful British politician whom we (opposition to Smith) met in Rhodesia was closely linked, not always amicably, with David Steel's political party life.
Finally, after meeting many and various of his father's admirers, inclluding a group of ancients who remain bouond in solidarity together in a Mau Mau veterans association, David Steel is recorded most recently searching the Kenyan National Archives in Kenya in order to learn more of his illustrius father's life in that colony. He discovers an impressive collection of letters revealing Rev. Steel's struggle with British officials on behalf of his African flock.
This last puts me in mind of the fact that I must hasten to see that my papers (the lifetime collection of an ancient, `colonial relic') - both personal and political - must continue to be safely stored. The first twenty years from 1962 when the Rhodesian Front came to power in Rhodesia are safely archived at my old Cape Town University; the next twenty, to 2003 will soon be on their way to the Hoover Institution at Stanford in America. Insignificant though my personal role in the greater scheme of Zimbabwe's history might have been, there are often many marked down truths from long-gone witnesses to be found in carefully preserved documents, wherever they may be.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Monday, July 7, 2008
Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) flag's official prayer.
I found a poster among my papers today and found I have forgottern how to copy to my blog. Originally, it was a full colour illustration "inserted on behalf of the Government" as Advertisement Supplement :The Sunday Mail - The Sunday News. September 2, 1979.
The advert was published on the day the Zimbabwe Rhodesia flag was raised on September 2 at thirteen centres throughout the country and six months before Zimbabwe's Independence was formally ushered in on April 18, 1980 . The "Rhodesia" bit was forever dropped but the colours remained the same and the design was varied to match the aspiration of a new Zimbabwe. Unhappily the message now is more true than ever - 28 years on on the accompanying logo "The people want peace - That is what the people want". This appears at the foot of every one of the full colour, A3 pages.
The expressions of great and good intentions advertised in the September poster show how tragically Zimbabweans were duped by Mugabe and his gang of political assassins and thieves into believing we would be well ruled after the liberation struggle was ended.
If I can master the technology I will copy another page of the advert in another blog. It tells us the meaning of the dumped flag's five colours:
GOLD for the bird of Gold that tells our country's wealth;
GREEN, our land that grows food for all and fulfils our needs;
BLACK that says the government belongs to the people;
WHITE that promises home for every minority and faith;
RED that speaks of our nation's sacrifices.
Only the black and the red now speak truth. Especially the red; the sacrifices are still being made while their true purpose has, since 2000 been utterly betrayed.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
The advert was published on the day the Zimbabwe Rhodesia flag was raised on September 2 at thirteen centres throughout the country and six months before Zimbabwe's Independence was formally ushered in on April 18, 1980 . The "Rhodesia" bit was forever dropped but the colours remained the same and the design was varied to match the aspiration of a new Zimbabwe. Unhappily the message now is more true than ever - 28 years on on the accompanying logo "The people want peace - That is what the people want". This appears at the foot of every one of the full colour, A3 pages.
The expressions of great and good intentions advertised in the September poster show how tragically Zimbabweans were duped by Mugabe and his gang of political assassins and thieves into believing we would be well ruled after the liberation struggle was ended.
If I can master the technology I will copy another page of the advert in another blog. It tells us the meaning of the dumped flag's five colours:
GOLD for the bird of Gold that tells our country's wealth;
GREEN, our land that grows food for all and fulfils our needs;
BLACK that says the government belongs to the people;
WHITE that promises home for every minority and faith;
RED that speaks of our nation's sacrifices.
Only the black and the red now speak truth. Especially the red; the sacrifices are still being made while their true purpose has, since 2000 been utterly betrayed.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Saturday, July 5, 2008
What more is there to say?
I bought a copy of The Guardian newspaper today because the front page blared out "Exclusive:secret film reveals how Mugabe stole an election". I followed this up on the internet. The video was brief but plausible. Brave Shepherd Yuda seems to have done his best to give his testimony to history before he escaped to a safer place.
Mr Yuda went along with a despicable regime for a long time. Thank God he got away. I know dozens of Zimbabweans who at various times "saw the light" and either left the country, changed their careers or made an effort to support one of several political parties opposed to the ZANU PF regime. Until the MDC arrived nothing changed, except for the worse. Things changed with the MDC all right, but now they are worse than ever.
What I find so galling is that Mugabe's elections have been stolen over and over again and by attrition - nobody beyond the country's borders with any influence has ever made any but token efforts to stop him - his demonic rule has prospered while the country has slipped over the precipice.
Can it be that the oft repeated call to Zimbabweans to solve their own problems is, in the final analysis, going to be the only way back? Morgan Tsvangirai has given a lead and has earned himself huge respect for his refusal to be goaded into a civil war where a military machine would face unarmed peasants and townspeople in a dreadful bloodbath, a fight to the finish. For now, there is a stalemate with a lot of secret maneuvering going on.
A defiant Robert Mugabe spits his venom at enemies manufactured entirely in his deranged imaginings. Pity the crowds who scream with delight as they watch him caper before them. Their screams, will echo through the blackest darkness as their children die of malnutrition, their young perish with AIDS and almost every able bodied adult who is unable to escape across the borders scrabbles for food. I hope I am wrong in my own worst imaginings.
I lived 70 years in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia where I was born). Like the majority of Zimbabweans today, I find it hard to believe that a nation with so much going for it could be destroyed by one man. Admittedly his military cronies will hold him up because they are even more corrupt than he is.
I foresaw that the camps set up to forcibly indoctrinate young, innocent school-leavers would seriously damage if not destroy the peaceloving nature of Zimbabwe's people. Those "green bombers" doing the bidding of their Zanu PF masters would set in motion unstoppable waves of violence throughout the country.
Today we are seeing the consequences of a great historical error: we were duped in 1980 into believing we would be well led by Robert Mugabe. I was among the believers until he slaughtered those 20 000 in Matabeleland. We allowed a mentally unstable, liberation leader to destroy hopes of a peaceful and prosperous future in a beautiful country for us all - black, white - everybody, including those in the feeding trough, the destroyer's allies and their progeny. Zimbabwe was a potentially great country. The craven collaborators of SADC are as blameworthy as his party aparachiks for the Robert Gabriel Mugabe catastrophe which will affect all Africa.
Until "Chinja"becomes more than a word, I will write only of the past. There is nothing more to say about the future.
(I have been making a feeble start at mastering links
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Mr Yuda went along with a despicable regime for a long time. Thank God he got away. I know dozens of Zimbabweans who at various times "saw the light" and either left the country, changed their careers or made an effort to support one of several political parties opposed to the ZANU PF regime. Until the MDC arrived nothing changed, except for the worse. Things changed with the MDC all right, but now they are worse than ever.
What I find so galling is that Mugabe's elections have been stolen over and over again and by attrition - nobody beyond the country's borders with any influence has ever made any but token efforts to stop him - his demonic rule has prospered while the country has slipped over the precipice.
Can it be that the oft repeated call to Zimbabweans to solve their own problems is, in the final analysis, going to be the only way back? Morgan Tsvangirai has given a lead and has earned himself huge respect for his refusal to be goaded into a civil war where a military machine would face unarmed peasants and townspeople in a dreadful bloodbath, a fight to the finish. For now, there is a stalemate with a lot of secret maneuvering going on.
A defiant Robert Mugabe spits his venom at enemies manufactured entirely in his deranged imaginings. Pity the crowds who scream with delight as they watch him caper before them. Their screams, will echo through the blackest darkness as their children die of malnutrition, their young perish with AIDS and almost every able bodied adult who is unable to escape across the borders scrabbles for food. I hope I am wrong in my own worst imaginings.
I lived 70 years in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia where I was born). Like the majority of Zimbabweans today, I find it hard to believe that a nation with so much going for it could be destroyed by one man. Admittedly his military cronies will hold him up because they are even more corrupt than he is.
I foresaw that the camps set up to forcibly indoctrinate young, innocent school-leavers would seriously damage if not destroy the peaceloving nature of Zimbabwe's people. Those "green bombers" doing the bidding of their Zanu PF masters would set in motion unstoppable waves of violence throughout the country.
Today we are seeing the consequences of a great historical error: we were duped in 1980 into believing we would be well led by Robert Mugabe. I was among the believers until he slaughtered those 20 000 in Matabeleland. We allowed a mentally unstable, liberation leader to destroy hopes of a peaceful and prosperous future in a beautiful country for us all - black, white - everybody, including those in the feeding trough, the destroyer's allies and their progeny. Zimbabwe was a potentially great country. The craven collaborators of SADC are as blameworthy as his party aparachiks for the Robert Gabriel Mugabe catastrophe which will affect all Africa.
Until "Chinja"becomes more than a word, I will write only of the past. There is nothing more to say about the future.
(I have been making a feeble start at mastering links
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
GETTING TOGETHER - Zimbabwe's last hope
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
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 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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