"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
Thursday, April 19, 2007
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
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)