Maurice Picarda
Actually, might as well flounce.
Serious question, then. Why are you bothering, instead of moving straight to twitter? The online forum scene is like the CB scene of the mid 90s.
President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is 89 and running for another term.
- Thread starter Robert Wilson
- Start date
Serious question, then. Why are you bothering, instead of moving straight to twitter? The online forum scene is like the CB scene of the mid 90s.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
You're a newbie yourself.
Robert Wilson
New Member
A friend has been a member of this forum for ages and suggested I join. I'm also on Twitter too but hate the word limit haha!
Lo Siento.
Second As Farce
really? What did he reckon?
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Unfortunately not true, there's an entire heirarchy of kleptocrats waiting in line behind Mad Bob, itching to get the reins of power in their hands, and the wealth of Zim in their pockets.
Buckaroo
Donkey piss and tractors
Largest diamond reserves in the world, second largest platinum
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Hell yeah.
likesfish
You can't park here sir
Lo Siento.
Second As Farce
you mean despite the natural resources? The two things often go together... (as go authoritarian paternalist states like Libya and Venezuela)
Don´t worry about it, this forum is allowed to be a bit of a zoo at times, it´s really the better for it actually.
Your post was very interesting.
It seems to an outsider that there is a anticolonial logic to land redistribution. It´s exactly the policy you´d expect an anticolonialist to follow. And of course one would expect the Western media to portray a leader who followed it as a madman, tyrant etc.
But as I understand it, there are major problems with the way in which Mugabe is carrying out this policy. In fact it appears that it is weighed down with so much corruption as to devalue the entire idea. Although the idea itself still seems valid in principle.
Is that a fair summary of the situation?
My limited understanding of the land redistribution was an uprising of veterans (and hangers on) from the war of independence wanting to know where their share of the spoils of war were and mugabe basically buying them off with that land. When the white settlers lost their land Mugabe took the position that it should be the UK who compensate them as the land was originally stolen, not Zimbabwe.
Sounds reasonable enough to me.
My understanding is that Mugabe has messed up this basically reasonable policy by giving special favors to his cronies. But then again, I assume that most of his cronies are genuine war veterans.
I certainly don´t trust the Western media on Zimbabwe, and I have few other sources of information, so this could be a very interesting thread.
Good on him - I hope I'm still going strong at his age.
Buckaroo
Donkey piss and tractors
What? He's a mis-understood freedom fighter and his commitment to education, land reform and democratic transparency is dismissed by colonialists as murderous tyranny, racism and genoicide. And it's his birthday. For he's a jolly good fellow...etc
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
...also the best meat pies I've ever had, anywhere in the world.
Zimbabwean beef, even now, is fucking awesome. I can only imagine how good it could be.
A fuck tonne of diamonds. That China has been happily buying from them.
eatmorecheese
He's fallen out of the car again
Land redistribution was one of the core issues that needed grappling in 1980, when Bob came to power. I believe white land ownership actually increased in the decade that followed, alongside an agricultural export boom.
Mugabe has used the land issue as a convenient whipping boy for many years; it helps distract from the wider ethnic violence and oppression carried out by ZANU-PF and the military North Korean trained hit squads. The "veterans" were a segment of Mugabe's core support (many of whom would have been in nappies at the time of the war against Ian Smith's racist regime) that simply occupied white-owned farms with government support.
He's the last of a breed, Mugabe. The last surviving liberation era African leader. And in his mind, he's still fighting the anti-colonial battles like in the old days, with Nyerere, Nkrumah, Kaunda, Karume and the rest in the 1960's. Admittedly, his battles lasted longer and generated much more bitterness. His rants at homosexual plots by gay British politicians give the game away. Everywhere, plots and calumnies generated by external threats.
Mugabe has presided over the destruction of the democratic and legal framework of Zimbabwe, extended a regime of terror and run the economy into the ground. His life experience was framed in an equally vital battle against a racist, provincial white Rhodesian regime that had weighed the institutions of state against the black majority. The hunted became the hunter.
I don't know how Zimbabwe moves on from this. The Ndebele/Shona divisions, the lack of political infrastructure, the poisonous past. Nyerere said to Mugabe in 1980, "You've inherited a jewel. Keep it that way". For a host of reasons this wasn't possible.
I suspect that whether he gives up the presidency or not, Mugabe's influence will only end when he dies.
Mugabe has used the land issue as a convenient whipping boy for many years; it helps distract from the wider ethnic violence and oppression carried out by ZANU-PF and the military North Korean trained hit squads. The "veterans" were a segment of Mugabe's core support (many of whom would have been in nappies at the time of the war against Ian Smith's racist regime) that simply occupied white-owned farms with government support.
He's the last of a breed, Mugabe. The last surviving liberation era African leader. And in his mind, he's still fighting the anti-colonial battles like in the old days, with Nyerere, Nkrumah, Kaunda, Karume and the rest in the 1960's. Admittedly, his battles lasted longer and generated much more bitterness. His rants at homosexual plots by gay British politicians give the game away. Everywhere, plots and calumnies generated by external threats.
Mugabe has presided over the destruction of the democratic and legal framework of Zimbabwe, extended a regime of terror and run the economy into the ground. His life experience was framed in an equally vital battle against a racist, provincial white Rhodesian regime that had weighed the institutions of state against the black majority. The hunted became the hunter.
I don't know how Zimbabwe moves on from this. The Ndebele/Shona divisions, the lack of political infrastructure, the poisonous past. Nyerere said to Mugabe in 1980, "You've inherited a jewel. Keep it that way". For a host of reasons this wasn't possible.
I suspect that whether he gives up the presidency or not, Mugabe's influence will only end when he dies.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
At 89, that can't be too long in coming.
coley
Well-Known Member
By order of preference, Mugabe, Thatcher, Scargill
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
I elive The uk did help fund land redistrubition but stopped when ministers and bobs mates were first in the line.
This is the first I've heard of it. As I understand it, funding for land reform was a key part of the Lancaster house agreement, but it was never put into practice.
Anyway recent research on Mugabe's "land reform via thuggery (Scoones et al, 2010) argues that not all of the seized land was given to Mugger's henchmen (though a lot of it was), with some of it actually reaching at least some of the landless masses for whom the reform was originally intended.
See here:
http://www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/zimbabwean4pdf.pdf
Also, this looks interesting, but I don't have time to read it right now:
http://www.yale.net/agrarianstudies/colloqpapers/12scoones.pdf
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