Mugabe and Mamdani
This is a guest post by Michelle Sieff, and is cross posted from Z Word
Mahmood Mamdani, the eminent professor of Government at Columbia University, has published an appalling article on Zimbabwe in the London Review of Books.
Before I ravage him, let me first say that in the past I greatly admired Professor Mamdani. His two books on African politics - Citizen and Subject and When Victims Become Killers - are landmarks in the field of Comparative Politics. But my appreciation of his past work does not prevent me from recognizing his recent descent into sophistry.
In the article, Mamdani defends Robert Mugabe, on the grounds that the Zimbabwean dictator is pursuing “land reform” policies. Mamdani says these policies “have won him considerable popularity, not just in Zimbabwe but throughout Southern Africa.” He argues that the people of Zimbabwe are likely to remember 2000-2003 as the end of the settler colonial era, just as, according to Mamdani, the Ugandan people experienced the Asian expulsion of 1972 – not the formal handover in 1962 – as the dawn of true independence.
No doubt that the most brutal political regimes in history – including Hitler’s – had their supporters. But is it true that most Ugandans remember Amin’s Asian expulsion as the dawn of true independence? Not if you ask current President Museveni, who has said that the Asian expulsion was a ghastly error and has desperately tried to encourage Asians to return.
Mamdani’s argument is marked by dogmatic third-worldism, arrogance, and dishonesty. He claims that Mugabe’s “land reform” policies are wildly popular. This is like claiming Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere’s brutal rural “villagisation” policy or even Pol Pot’s genocidal version were popular.
Other than Mugabe’s cronies, who else supports Mugabe’s “land reform” policies? Mamdani never bothers to tell us. Towards the end of the article, he implies that in rural Zimbabwe, groups of “peasants” support Mugabe, but he never identifies them and certainly never permits them to speak for themselves. Public opinion data suggests Zimbabweans do not care about “land reform”. In a 2005 Afrobarometer survey 59% of Zimbabweans said that food shortages and the economy were their most important problems, and none said that land was an important issue. Three quarters did not have confidence in the government’s ability to solve these problems.
For years, we have seen mounting evidence of opposition to Mugabe-from trade unions, civil society, and opposition party members-and his brutal efforts to repress them. Mamdani craftily dismisses these inconvenient facts. What about the reality that in 2000 Mugabe’s proposal to change the constitution to allow land seizures were defeated in a referendum? Mamdani says only 20 per cent of the electorate cast their vote and implies that these mysterious peasants – who stayed home – actually supported Mugabe.
What about the countless fact-based reports by groups like Human Rights Watch about Mugabe’s violent manipulation of the electoral process since 2000? Mamdani devotes one line to this problem. He says that in 2004, the violence “began to abate” and that there was “noticeably less violence” surrounding the parliamentary elections of 2005.
Mamdani excuses Mugabe’s crimes because these crimes have advanced a superior end – a “democratic revolution” in the property pyramid, adding more than a 100,000 small property owners. To refute the conventional wisdom that much of the seized land has gone to Mugabe’s cronies, not the poor, he relies on this paper by Ian Scoones, a scholar at the University of Sussex, who refutes the “myth” that the main beneficiaries of land reform have been Mugabe’s cronies. His evidence? Interviews from 400 households in one province called Masvingo. Now I am sure that some of the seized land has gone to ordinary people. But to call it all a “democratic revolution” is surely an exaggeration.
Throughout the article Mamdani is determined to erase the history of Mugabe’s violence and repression. By Mamdani’s lights, “it is striking how little turmoil accompanied this massive social change.” Every fact is erased: the mass torture, the beatings, the 4 million people who have fled, the five million who now face starvation, the 1.4 million at risk from the current cholera epidemic.
Mamdani will stop at nothing to excuse Mugabe. He argues that the collapse in food production is a result of drought and western sanctions. I don’t doubt that there are now multiple causes of Zimbabwe’s food crisis, but Mugabe’s violent land seizures have played a massive role.
Mamdani’s airbrushing of history begs the obvious question: Why? What happened to the once brilliant scholar who used to respect facts and articulate balanced arguments? I have a theory: 9/11 happened. And Mamdani, who opposed the Iraq war, has fashioned himself into an ideologue in the style of his Columbia colleague, the late Edward Said . He now believes that there is no longer any evil in the world to oppose, except the US and Israel.
This worldview explains many of his recent works and activism. It explains why Mamdani is one of the most outspoken supporters at Columbia of a campaign calling for the university to divest its holdings from companies that sell weapons to Israel. It explains his 2004 book, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, where he argued that the spread of terrorism owes more to US anti-Communist intervention than to anything Osama bin Laden ever did. It explains why Mamdani equated American “neoconservatives” and jihadists in a 2004 Foreign Affairs article. It explains another article he wrote for the London Review of Books, in 2007, where he laboriously denied that the atrocities in Darfur were a genocide and impugned the motives of Darfur activists, suggesting that they were puppets of the Bush administration’s anti-Arab war on terror. And it explains why Mamdani is hell-bent on justifying Mugabe’s tyranny in Zimbwabe.
Comments
| 13 December 2008, 1:27 pm |
It claims to be totally independent on its website.
| 13 December 2008, 1:28 pm |
There’s a long letter in this issue of LRB from R W Johnson refuting Mahmood Mamdani.
David T – I see what you mean by detesting the LRB but do it some justice. There are excellent people writing for it eg John Lanchester. I would be pissed off if the LRB ceased to exist. There aren’t many outlets in this country for long, serious articles of general interest for which the writers are paid. The USA has a lot more publications which carry long weighty articles.
I think that about 10 issues have gone by without them doing a long article denouncing Israel. They seem to have eased up on the Israel kicking and Hezbollah licking.
| 13 December 2008, 1:32 pm |
I like reading the LRB. Some excellent long form book reviews in it, some of the best around, of both fiction and non-fiction. I’m quite certain that it does not receive a public subsidy. I tend to not even read any of the essays they publish as soon as I see the names of certain recursive saps like Mamdani and Tariq Ali.
Mamdani is married to the Indian film director Mira Nair who made ‘Monsoon Wedding’, and I remember reading an interview with her somewhere in which 9/11 was all about Orientalist stereotyping and third world resistance and all of that baloney. Shut up and stick to films, and lay off the Gayatri Spivak, Mira.
| 13 December 2008, 1:38 pm |
Here are the letters in the latest edition of the LRB written in response to Mamdani’s article, and at the end, the LRB have given him the right to reply to all of the criticisms made in the correspondence.
+++++++++++++++++++
Lessons of Zimbabwe
From R.W. Johnson
It may be true, as Mahmood Mamdani writes, that some Ugandans felt their real independence began when they kicked the Asians out, though President Museveni says it was the worst mistake the country ever made and has tried hard to persuade Asians to return (LRB, 4 December). Authoritarian populism has always had its imitators: Kristallnacht excited anti-semites throughout Europe at the thought of how much Jewish property they might seize. But the opposite happened in Zimbabwe, where Mugabe’s brutal dilapidation of the country had the effect of making Ian Smith’s Rhodesia seem like a lost golden age to many.
Mamdani’s article is a compendium of errors. He should know that the reason for the suspension of British aid for land reform was that the land was going to Mugabe’s cronies, not to the poor. At the same time, farmers could not sell farmland without first offering it for land reform, but time and again the government said it wasn’t interested. Even when the government did buy such land it often left productive farms to rot: I have seen the collapsing farmhouses, the fields full of weeds. But when the radical Edgar Tekere ran against Mugabe in 1990, Mugabe suddenly began threatening land invasions and the takeover of white farms. Mugabe saw Tekere off, thanks to massive ballot-stuffing, but it was clear that the land issue was kept in reserve in case of political crisis. When Mugabe lost the 2000 constitutional referendum, the strategy was wheeled out again.
Mamdani writes of the ‘war vets’ as if they all wanted to be farmers: those who worked with them say that wasn’t so. He also omits the fact that very few of the alleged war vets of the post-2000 period were any such thing. Most were far too young to have fought in the 1970s. Mamdani describes them as a popular movement but they weren’t: the land invasions were orchestrated by Mugabe’s party and security services. I saw this for myself, as did others. He talks of the constitutional referendum as if there had been a free vote but there wasn’t: not only did Mugabe allow the MDC no access to state-controlled radio and TV but there was massive rigging in the rural areas. Still it wasn’t enough, for Mugabe had underestimated the size of the ‘no’ vote the cities would cast. Mamdani describes the trade unions as if they were an Anglo-American creation and represented mainly Ndebeles. This is nonsense: they were left-wing organisations which had supported the liberation struggle and were closely tied to the (Communist-dominated) Congress of South African Trade Unions. Most of their members and their leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, were Shona – unsurprising, given that 80 per cent of the population is Shona. Their major foreign donor was the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the German Social Democratic foundation.
Mamdani talks as if ‘land reform’ was a popular revolution, which is rather like writing a history of Cambodia in which Pol Pot’s genocidal re-ruralisation was carried out by popular demand. I was part of a team that carried out nationwide polls in Zimbabwe throughout this period and we published all our findings widely. A steady 63 per cent said they wanted Mugabe out and no more than 9 per cent ever said land was the chief issue, a figure which soon dropped to 4 per cent. Mamdani does not mention the fact that the land invasions were a massive attack on farm workers, whose numbers he gives as 300,000, though together with their families there were 2.4 million of them living on white farms. They were principally blamed for Mugabe’s referendum defeat and were mercilessly beaten and tortured in dreadful weeks-long ‘re-education’ sessions. I had to deal with torture victims and saw things I never wish to see again.
Mamdani talks of the repression ‘in Ndebele areas in 1986’. Hasn’t he read the authoritative report Breaking the Silence, which shows how much wider than that the phenomenon was? Mamdani throughout underplays the huge role mass torture played in his supposed popular revolution, not just in Matabeleland and the Midlands in the 1980s but on farms in 2000-2 and thereafter in the specially constituted torture camps set up by Mugabe which still operate today. Why does he omit these atrocities?
Mamdani remarks ‘how little turmoil accompanied this massive social change’. The mass beatings, the torture, the killings have all been whited out. He must know that more than four million people have fled Zimbabwe, that in this period life expectancy has fallen to the lowest on the planet, that five million people are facing starvation and 1.4 million are at risk of cholera. In his account the main reason for the collapse in food production and the resulting famine is drought. Zimbabwe has often suffered droughts but up until the ‘land reform’ it always fed all its people and exported a lot more food as well. He also blames ‘sanctions’, yet there are no sanctions on Zimbabwean imports or exports and the reason international institutions won’t lend to Mugabe is that he has defaulted on repayment and reneged on their loan conditions. He also routinely steals any foreign exchange earned by his own people.
Colonial rule was racist and unfair and of course the whites took much of the best land. But in 1901 there were only 712,600 people in the whole country. Much of the land the whites settled was vacant. Under colonial rule, for all its faults, the population multiplied by ten (to 7,477,443 in 1982) and a thriving commercial agriculture became the main motor of national growth and prosperity. Those whites who stayed on after 1980 embraced majority rule and tried hard to make it all work. And it could have: the country is blessed with mineral wealth, huge tourist potential and a highly educated population. All this was blighted by Mugabe’s Marxism-Leninism and the would-be one-partyism that drove investment away. Economic development was crippled, the fast-growing population couldn’t be supported and Mugabe became increasingly unpopular. In his rage he then turned on the one productive part of the economy that still functioned, the commercial farms, reducing Zimbabwe to famine, plague and ashes in his determination to stay in power whatever the cost. The exact figures are still unclear but it seems likely that the terrible things he has done to his country have caused over a million deaths.
R.W. Johnson
Cape Town
===
From Terence Ranger
Mahmood Mamdani is correct to stress that Robert Mugabe is not just a crazed dictator or a corrupt thug but that he promotes a programme and an ideology that are attractive to many in Africa and to some in Zimbabwe itself. Mamdani takes care to balance this by recognising Mugabe’s propensity for violence. Yet this balance is hard to maintain and towards the end of his article Mamdani lets it slip.
‘Western countries,’ he writes, ‘brought their influence to bear on key Southern African Development Community (SADC) members – Botswana and Zambia – to split the organisation. Ian Khama, the president of Botswana, went so far as to announce publicly that he would not recognise the results of the 2008 elections.’ But Khama needed no Western influence to realise that the June presidential rerun in Zimbabwe was illegitimate. Every African observer mission – Botswana’s own, the Pan-African Parliament’s, SADC’s – pronounced that Mugabe’s victory was vitiated by the violence that went on right up until the polls, which the observers saw with their own eyes, and of which some of them were the victims. The problem is rather to explain why so many SADC states have continued to accept Mugabe as the legitimate president despite the first-hand reports of their own emissaries.
This isn’t a minor flaw in Mamdani’s article since it bears on his principal analytical point. He stresses the opposition between urban workers and rural peasants, the latter supporting Mugabe because of land restitution. Yet the violence between March and June this year took place overwhelmingly in the rural areas. It would not have been necessary had the peasantry of Mashonaland and Manicaland solidly supported the regime. The March election showed that they did not, despite land re-distribution. The regime lost virtually all the Manicaland seats and there were solid votes for the opposition even in Mashonaland constituencies which Zanu-PF had previously taken for granted. Indeed it was in such constituencies that the violence was concentrated.
Zimbabwean peasants confront hunger, disease, repression; they have no inputs of seeds, fertiliser and draught power. The redistribution of land has been conducted in a way that makes a mockery of the potentials of peasant production. Mugabe’s policy may be an inspiration to those in South Africa who want to redress gross inequalities in landholding. But it should also be a warning of how not to go about it.
Terence Ranger
Oxford
===
From Matthias Tomczak
Mahmood Mamdani rightly points out the British government’s refusal to accept its responsibility to comply with the Lancaster House Agreement. It is worth pointing out that the terms of the agreement were from the beginning designed to underfund Zimbabwe’s land reform. The agreement allocated £75 million for payment to landowners (of which, as Mamdani states, only £44 million was spent when Labour abrogated it). This compares to the £500 million Britain made available for land acquisition and settlement support in Kenya after independence. Even if one takes into account the difference in population, equivalent funding for Zimbabwe would amount to some £200 million, which would have given peaceful land reform a much better chance of success.
Matthias Tomczak
Adelaide
====
From Mahmood Mamdani
I was pained to find that the long bibliographical note accompanying my article ‘Lessons of Zimbabwe’ was carried in the web version of the LRB but not in the printed text. I also regret that acknowledgments to key Zimbabwean scholars were not made in the body of the work. As the director of the Centre for Basic Research in Kampala from 1987 to 1996, I became keenly aware of a tendency among externally-based writers to make use of local research but seldom to acknowledge it.
I wish therefore to take this opportunity to record my reliance on a solid body of Zimbabwean research, most of it produced inside the country, and some in exile. For anyone wanting to understand the historical trajectory of land reform, the work of Sam Moyo, who directs the African Institute for Agrarian Studies in Harare, is indispensable. In addition, I would like to acknowledge W. Sadomba’s work on war veterans; Gregory Elich’s on sanctions; Lloyd Sachikonye’s on land economy; and Brian Raftopoulos, Ian Phimister, Patrick Bond and Masimba Manyanya’s on the labour movement. This work has been exemplary, inspired by a tradition that joins sustained research to an ongoing, politically sensitive internal debate.
Mahmood Mamdani
New York
| 13 December 2008, 1:44 pm |
Ah that’s what you get for ignoring anything to do with headaches like Mamdani. His letter isn’t a reply to the criticisms made in the correspondence about his article, but a bibliographical note. Anyway, he’s still a piece of work.
| 13 December 2008, 3:46 pm |
As a Zimbabwean,living in Zimbabwe, experiencing the day-to-day life most of those who have commented on Mamdani’s story only read in newspapers or on the internet, I totally agree with Mamdani’s article.
Mugabe has overstayed and it is time he went but he has done some very good things for our country. That should not be ignored. Yes, the country is now in tatters but as another academic George Monbiot said, Mugabe upset the order of things by taking land from whites. It has always been the other way round. He is being punished for that and so is former South Africa president Thabo Mbeki. He now knows how important the land issue is. Too late he will not be able to do anything as the land issue in Zimbabwe cost him his presidency.
Yes, Mugabe is now arrogant, but let’s give him credit for the good things he did for Zimbabwe. Let us not lie that he has presided over the collapse of this country for 28 years. The collapse started only a decade ago and let us also accept the reasons.
| 13 December 2008, 4:07 pm |
The black Hitler, as he likes to be known, is responsible for crimes beyond imagining. All will be revealed in due course. I have to agree with the Archibshop of York when he says the man should be at the Hague. Other of the world’s religious leaders remain suspiciously silent. But then it was always so.
| 13 December 2008, 4:22 pm |
Are you the Charles Rukuni who used to write for the FinGaz? If so why are you writing such nonsense?
The land issue did not cost Mbeki his job.
The financial collapse started well before 1998.
Which “good things” did Mugabe do? And did they outweigh the Matabeleland massacres in your view?
You used to write so well in the FinGaz, what happened?
| 13 December 2008, 4:57 pm |
The LRB gets 20k a year from the Arts Council
| 13 December 2008, 5:53 pm |
Yes, the country is now in tatters but as another academic George Monbiot said, Mugabe upset the order of things by taking land from whites.
And giving it to his cronies and supporters who had no idea what they were doing, thus contributing to a desperate food shortage.
Yes, Mugabe is now arrogant, but let’s give him credit for the good things he did for Zimbabwe.
I’m sorry, but if this story (among many others) is even remotely accurate– and I can’t believe dozens of children fabricated the same story– that would be like giving Hitler credit for eliminating unemployment and building the autobahn.
| 13 December 2008, 5:57 pm |
The only George Monbiot I’m aware of is that small-minded Eco-fascist who made a fool of himself when he decided in his limited way, that it it’d be right-on and totally groovy to try to arrest John ‘The Moustache’ Bolton for some reason. Does a self-regarding dickhead with a totally fucked-up way of thinking who writes for some lefty fringe rag really qualify as an ‘academic’?
| 13 December 2008, 6:05 pm |
Chaps, OT I know, but this is very important:
On 15 November, Colour Sergeant Krishnabahadur Dura of the 2nd Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles was killed in action in Afghanistan.
Defence News, part of the Ministry of Defence, said, “He was rated as one of the Army’s best snipers attaining best student on his Snipers’ course. He was highly respected by all.” C. Sgt Dura was killed by a Taliban bomb which injured two male colleagues and one female officer, who lost her leg.
C. Sgt Dura, 36, leaves two daughters and a wife. He had served in the British Army since 1992.
But the purpose of this article is not to recount his years of selfless service, nor to sing the praises of his heroism in Afghanistan. It is to draw attention to the most appallingly callous, bureaucratically pig-headed mindset Machiavelli has so far encountered. Because the Home Office is currently threatening to deport the wife and two little children of C. Sgt Dura.
| 13 December 2008, 6:25 pm |
RW Johnson becomes ever more entertainingly unhinged by the day.
That the population of Zimbabwe increased under colonial rule is supposed, somehow, to exculpate (or justify or mitigate colonialism or whatever). Almost every war in history has been followed by a baby boom; a novel general defence for war is in the offing. It gets better. Indeed, we have a new defence of the Cultural Revolution: simply observe that the murder of 30 million was eventually followed by a larger population than China had begun with.
That the land was sparsely occupied is supposed, somehow, to justify its theft. It’s unclear how the fact that I’m not using my car just now gives you the right to nick it, and it is certainly very unclear how that justifies your invading my house, shooting my relatives by the handful, and enserfing me while you’re at the theft. No doubt Mr Johnson will be quick to explain.
The rest is dreary rubbish. Incomes for farm workers actually fell from the 1960s onwards in Rhodesia. (See Angus Selby’s thesis) Smith’s own government’s stats showed that more than 8 in 10 Africans lived below (the very low) poverty line in the mid-70s. A UN study just after independence showed that more than 9 in 10 black Zimbabweans were malnourished.
The line of causation is ridiculous: apparently, Uncle Bob up and decided to flush his country down the toilet because he was angry that day. This is ridiculous.
At least Mamdani is trying to explain stuff. It’s worth distinguishing Mugabe’s support and the popularity of the land redistribution. Stephen Chan (I think it was) made clear in one of his articles for Prospect that Mugabe retained the support of around 40% of voters. Earlier surveys showed significantly greater support for land redistribution; given the fact that serious economic activity in Zim revolves around land, if a clear distinction were drawn between land reform and land reform a la Uncle Bob, I imagine there would be far greater support for equitable and redistribution.
| 13 December 2008, 7:28 pm |
Are the people also delighted that there is no functioning health service?
| 13 December 2008, 9:45 pm |
Charles Rukuni
I am prepared to bet that, immediately following Mugabe’s departure, you will either:
- change your tune, and start announcing loudly that you always thought the ex-Pres was a scoundrel and a crook; or
- apply for political asylum in the UK, claiming that your countrymen in post-Mugabe Zim are threatening your life.
Which do you think it will be?
| 13 December 2008, 10:37 pm |
Well it IS reform. Reform some of it into Mugabe’s private property and turn the rest into mass graves. Find me a socialist revolution that ended some other way. You can’t make an omlette w/o murdering a million innocents.
| 14 December 2008, 12:34 am |
Yes a Marxist (Mugabe) is misruling a Christian nation (Zimbabwe)
and David T blames the “Mooooslims”
| 14 December 2008, 9:47 am |
Stu – There is a good probability that what changed Rukuni’s mind was precisely the issue being discussed. I bet he is the recipient of a farm not a 3 hectare bit of barren land like that dished out to the peasants, in Masvingo which Ian Scoones disingenuously or dishonestly writes about but a proper farm – house, buildings and equipment – “the full catastrophe”. Come on Charles tell us it isn’t so.
| 14 December 2008, 10:02 am |
Emmanuel has constructed a beautiful new theory of lebensraum!
Immigrants can never become citizens and you must give up part of your land as your country’s population grows! I dont know where you live Emmanuel but presumably you would be happy to give up part of your home if the population grew. Further that if you are not a “native” you cannot own land there at all.
It would be comical if it were not so depressing.
| 14 December 2008, 11:27 am |
The LRB is a waste of time, unless you enjoy reading its cabal of stalinists and pseudo-liberals. The original review paper, the TLS, wins hands down for serious academic discussion.
God help Africa if Mamdani’s idea of progress takes root. He is a classic symptom of the rotten state of certain sections of academia.
| 14 December 2008, 4:08 pm |
“”"”"”"Yes, Mugabe is now arrogant, but let’s give him credit for the good things he did for Zimbabwe. Let us not lie that he has presided over the collapse of this country for 28 years. The collapse started only a decade ago and let us also accept the reasons.”"”"”
even if it was so, that does not excluse mugabe in any way, on the contrary it only adds weight to his responsibilities in his country current situation.
in politics, a people cannot become hostage of debts of gratitude. if a leader or an elite who once fought for national liberation then imposes on its own people a regime like the one in which zimbabweans are forced to live in, then that elite is betraying all the principles it once fought for, which in turn allows the question, were they fighting for national liberation or to become the sultan in the place of the sultan?
David T: if your explanation is correct, that’s just one more example of how flawd a significant part of the academic elite is. I think one of the problems with academics is vanity, the other is how easily they get detached from reality when they are ideologically motivated, and finally, a certain lust for power over people’s minds, and the third one is the one that bothers me most, because I’ve seen how easy it is for manipulators to create a feeling of fascination on his students/assistants/followers. not everyone is like that, obviously, but it’s just so easy after the get a certain degree of public recognition to become like that…
| 14 December 2008, 4:09 pm |
sorry, the second half of my comment was directed to the author of this post, not david t (I guess they won’t mind, but still sorry for the confusion)
| 15 December 2008, 12:12 am |
re: david t blames the ‘mooslims’
Idiot, when did David T blame the Muslims for Zimbabwe? I know Mugabe and Muslim both share the first two letters, but beyond that…. where’s the connection? I am however rather surprised you haven’t blamed the Jooos yet, though perhaps you’re just holding that back in reserve.
| 15 December 2008, 12:13 am |
RE: Yes, the country is now in tatters but as another academic George Monbiot said, Mugabe upset the order of things by taking land from whites. It has always been the other way round. He is being punished for that…”
No, he’s being “punished” (if only!) because as you say the country is now in tatters!! (Tatters which were long predicted by many, it should be noted.)
| 15 December 2008, 7:42 am |
I am not one of the beneficiaries of the land reform programme. I don’t have a farm and I do not intend to own one. I grew up on a farm. I know it’s hard work. But I support the land reform programme so that those who seriously want to go into farming can do so. We cannot all be farmers.
I used to and still write for the Financial Gazette. We do not have agree on everything.
For the remainder of the comments, I thought this was what this debate is about. We do not have to agree.
The biggest problem in Zimbabwe is that the whole political issue has been turned into a religion. You are either wrong or you are right. You are either pro and anti-Mugabe. You are either pro or anti-Tsvangirai.
Yet surveys that have been done by independent think tanks show that more than 60 percent of the population does not support either Mugabe or Tsvangirai.
| 15 December 2008, 7:41 pm |
Why not google ‘The Leaders’ or get there on my blog-link? I have the feeling Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu & co. are as up to speed as anybody outside the place can be on all this.
| 29 December 2008, 5:33 am |
Charles Rukuni makes the comment that he actually lives in Zimbabwe while the rest of us must make our mind up on the news we are fed – and yes he does have that point, but I try to make my mind up by speaking to family members still in Zimbabwe as well as Black and White friends now living here in South Africa, in order to temper possible media bias.
I also base my judgements on what is said by commentators I trust – such as Elinor Sisulu (try googling Gukurahundi and you will see atrocities reaching back way beyond a decade Charles).
Mugabe is a monster and it is to my country’s eternal shame that we continue to keep silent about his tyrany.
There is a section of the “mainstream left” that has gone absolutely mad.
Its home is the London Review of Books.
Am I right in thinking that the LRB receives a public subsidy? If so, I hope that this government, or the next, will take it away.