Home » The leaders of Africa fail to live up to their Sister Souljah moment on Mugabe

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The leaders of Africa fail to live up to their Sister Souljah moment on Mugabe — 11 Comments

  1. One refugee from Zimbabwe told me, “Mugabe likes to lecture us about how under Smith, whites ate steak while blacks ate gruel. What he is not so quick to mention, is that under Mugabe, Mugabe eats steak, the war veterans eat gruel, and everybody else eats dirt.”

  2. The motto for all the failed progressive experiments of the last century or so has to read, as Plotz writes, “It was not supposed to be this way.”

    Still, there is an achievement of sorts for Mugabe’s reign. He makes one nostalgic for Rhodesia.

    One of the most interesting articles on blogs about Rhodesia is

    Unqualified Reservations: The country that used to exist

    Which begins:

    What the hell is history, anyway? History is just a bunch of stuff that happened. Mostly to people now dead. We owe these people nothing. They’re dead, after all. Sometimes we have some scraps of paper they scribbled on. Sometimes we don’t….

    The country was called Rhodesia, and it is no longer found on any map. Earth’s crust being relatively stable, the place where it was still exists. But you wouldn’t want to go there.

    The story of Rhodesia is in a strange category we might call “living history.” Rhodesia is dead, but there are still a few Rhodesians kicking around, and some of them even have blogs. Such as this fellow – whose opinions I’m sure many UR readers might contest.

    Like all entries at Unqualified Reservations it is long, very long, if not so long as others, but it rewards patience.

  3. In the final analysis, the best hope for Africa is the restoration of colonial rule, based on English common law – the best legal system in history of humankind. The very big problem is absence of a viable colonial project in any Western democracy. Such project can result, though, as unintended consequence of GWOT, in struggle against islamic imperialism, against piracy and in massive humanitarian interventions that can became needed to prevent mass starvation, civil wars, genocide and other types of humanitarian cathastrophes, to which Africa is so disposed to.

  4. ***Beware anyone who sets himself up to be a country’s savior, especially a Marxist.***

    Hmmm, gee, I don’t know anyone offhand, say running for President of the United States, who would fit that description. Do you?

  5. Neo, I think you’re again being a bit sloppy with your research here. The article you linked to regarding Nelson Mandela was from June 9th. Mandela has harshly criticized the Mugabe regime, as numerous news articles have reported:

    http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5imhcd4-O5lcDINlaAWmo1VipB_2Q

    http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/07/01/the_judgment_of_mandela/

    Yes, he did stay silent for quite some time, but since he stepped down as President of South Africa he has generally kept to his promise to avoid direct criticism of his successor or of other African presidents. He wanted to move into the role of elder statesman. But Mugabe’s horrific tactics in Zimbabwe have finally pushed him to speak out.

    I think it’s quite unfortunate that you speak about this issue, again, as though it is a left/right issue. Every American ought to be horrified about what is happening in Zimbabwe. This is not a liberal vs. conservative issue. Obama has condemned what is going on in Zimbabwe just as McCain has, and every other leading American politician.

  6. Mandela has harshly criticized the Mugabe regime, as numerous news articles have reported:

    Oh?

    WHEN NELSON Mandela lamented Robert Mugabe’s “tragic failure of leadership” in Zimbabwe last week,

    This is not even strong criticism for a diplomat, much less a small-d democrat. Here’s plainspoken cricitism: “Mugabe is the marxist version of a kleptocrat, a thug who steals the whole country and enslaves everyone, black, white, and purple. How do you find purple people? Just the way Mugabe does: take white and black people and beat them vigorously.”

  7. You may want to go read some – ummm how to put it – unbiased history of Mandela.

    Why would he criticize much of the same things he did? This is about like being shocked that if Che Guevara was alive today he wasn’t condemning it – after all he was a freedom fighter for the common people trying to make a utopia for all to live in harmony together (according to many of the very same leftist who idolize Mandela for much the same reasons).

  8. Give me a break. Whatever his flaws, when Mandela came to power he kept his promises — a commitment to democracy, fairness to the white population in South Africa, and, most importantly, he left office peacefully when his terms of office were up. During his presidency rather than vindictiveness the country healed itself. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a model of how to recover from a brutal civil war without recriminations and revenge. South Africa was and is one of the most stable and affluent countries on the continent. I think it’s really sad that politics is so polarized in this country that some right-wing Americans can’t appreciate someone like Nelson Mandela, whose actions after taking power have been completely unlike that of Robert Mugabe.

    What IS regrettable is that Mbeki is taking such a passive line towards Mugabe. I find that quite reprehensible, myself.

    But this is not a left/right wing issue, as I said before. Mugabe’s opponent, Tsvangirai, is a trade union leader, whereas Mugabe comes from an upper class educated background. If anything, Mugabe represents the privileged class of Zimbabwe, and Tsvangirai the populist working class. What Mugabe is doing is beyond left vs right: it is thuggish dictatorial terror tactics, and ought to be condemned by everyone on all sides of our political spectrum. There ought to be some issues about which nearly all Americans can agree, and this is damn well one of them.

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  10. Rhodesia did not throw off “the yoke of British colonial rule” in 1980 as it declared independence in 1965 via UDI which was based on the US Declaration of Independence. The country returned briefly to UK rule as part of the negotiations ending white rule in 1979/80.

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