November 21, 2017
Mugabe gone at last.
"Robert Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980, resigned as president on Tuesday shortly after lawmakers began impeachment proceedings against him, according to the speaker of Parliament," the NYT reports.
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37 comments:
Who'd he harass?
When his surrogates were killing white farmers nobody cared. When one of his kids flaunted his wealth there was a revolution. Priorities revealed.
Mugabe is an example of the tragedy of Africa.
There is a pretty good book, written by a white supporter, called "Dinner with Mugabe" that makes the case that he knew he was not equipped to run the country and wanted the last British Governor General, Lord Soames, whose wife was Churchill's youngest daughter, to remain and help him rule.
It wasn't to be and the rule in Africa is that all the supporters get their cut of the loot, which destroyed the economy.
Anthony Daniels explained this in his essay, "After Empire," on his time in Rhodesia.
it had produced a growing cadre of educated Africans, doctors prominent among them. Unsurprisingly, they were not content to remain subalterns under the permanent tutelage of whites, so that our relations with them were superficially polite and collegial, but human warmth was difficult or impossible. Many belonged secretly to the African nationalist movement that was soon to take power; and two were to serve (if that is the word to describe their depredations) as ministers of health.
Unlike in South Africa, where salaries were paid according to a racial hierarchy (whites first, Indians and coloured second, Africans last), salaries in Rhodesia were equal for blacks and whites doing the same job, so that a black junior doctor received the same salary as mine. But there remained a vast gulf in our standards of living, the significance of which at first escaped me; but it was crucial in explaining the disasters that befell the newly independent countries that enjoyed what Byron called, and eagerly anticipated as, the first dance of freedom.
The young black doctors who earned the same salary as we whites could not achieve the same standard of living for a very simple reason: they had an immense number of social obligations to fulfill. They were expected to provide for an ever expanding circle of family members (some of whom may have invested in their education) and people from their village, tribe, and province.
This was a lot of what happened to Mugabe. He was the peak of a pyramid of followers who wanted the goose that had laid the golden eggs. They slaughtered it. Disaster followed.
An example of Mugabe's regard to Soames, when the man died Mugabe and his wife attended his funeral even though they were banned from traveling.
The Mugabes showed kindness to Lady Soames when her husband Christopher died. She did not expect them to come but the Soames’ must have meant a lot to the Mugabes. At that time Mugabe had not been banned in Britain and London was his second home and he didn’t an excuse to go London.
What might have been.
What comes next won't be any better. Just like Venezuela.
A bad man is gone. I hope his replacement isn’t worse.
They will regret not killing this monster. And his wife.
I hope that the lives of the people of Zimbabwe improve, even if just marginally. It would probably be dificult to have the next ruler be worse, but I suspect they will not be much better.
Where's Chuck's comment comparing Trump to Mugabe?
Socialism fails again. Unexpectedly.
Achilles: "Socialism fails again. Unexpectedly"
Not really. This was just a failure of Mugabe, not socialism. REAL socialism hasn't been tried.
Next time it will work for sure, if we have the right people in charge, and if those "running dog Capitalists" and wreckers don't destroy the Peoples Desires!
And just when we were poised to have a woman break the glass ceiling in Zimbabwe.
I disagree with all the above commenters. No one has yet mentioned China, and their role in this. I suspect that China was growing concerned over the reliability of Mugabe, and also had concerns about his wife. Plus he hadn't groomed a successor, and that also presented a problem for the Chinese. Given their huge investments in the country, they desired stable and bribable leadership that they could control. They now have it. It's no secret that multiple of the Zimbabwean generals flew to Beijing in the weeks before the coup, and certainly not a coincidence. The only real criteria that the Chinese had was that their be no bloodshed, although I suspect that Mugabe was whisker-close to dying of a heart attack, and he knew it.
Good riddance but will it matter? What type of replacement government is proposed? As roadgeek has suggested, are other countries pulling the strings? Most importantly, should we give a shit?
The new government would send a great message to the world and Zimbabwe's people if it turned over Mengistu, the butcher of Addis Ababa, to the Ethiopian government so justice can be done.
The crisis in Zimbabwe has generated intense interest in Ethiopia due to Mengistu, said Henock Alemu, a program director with a private station Ethio FM.
“All media houses have been providing in-depth coverage since day one and the issue has become the talk of the town,’’ he added.
On Thursday, Radio Fana, the biggest radio network, ran a report on how the military takeover might impact Mengistu’s future — they were not placing their bets on an extradition.
I suspect they're right
What comes after Mugabe will, almost certainly, be worse. I think there are no good outcomes to be found on the continent.
Most importantly, should we give a shit
The elephants that Trump doesn't kill could potentially wander into Zimbabwe.
Good comment on China, roadgeek.
They were also involved in the Congo way back in the 60s. They have been interested in Africa for years.
I remember when Mugabe came to power. And the Left was cheering. An end to white supremacist colonialism. Bob Marley saluting Mugabe in-a-Zim-bab-we.
I know a Rhodesian who grew up there before Mugabe. And how a prosperous, healthy little country was turned into a hellhole.
Maybe now, before he dies, Mugabe can experience his own living hell.
He wasn't just a typical African corruptocrat. Besides the terrorism against, and purging of, white farmers, there was the Matabeleland Massacres of the early 1980s - tens of thousands of N'Debeles slaughtered for no reason but for belonging to the wrong tribe. My recollection is that most of the army units that carried out the massacres were tutored by the North Koreans.
Jacques Chirac's diplomacy finally worked!!!! He was right all along!
How are things going in South Africa these days, anyway?
Specifically: how are things going for white South African farmers?
Kinda funny what stories don't get much coverage in the US Media, huh?
Jimmy Carter - the git that keeps on giving!
Derbyshire's speculation is that black countries don't have enough smart people to govern so it never works. There's smart people, just not enough. Bell curve.
I wonder how much title insurance costs in Zimbabwe? Do they even bother anymore?........They say racism or slavery is America's original sin. Do Africans ever speculate on that benighted continent's original sin. I bet they'd say colonialism, not tribalism, nor sexism. No, it couldn't possibly be those things.
"Derbyshire's speculation is that black countries don't have enough smart people to govern so it never works. There's smart people, just not enough. Bell curve."
You would call them "dumb niggers," but that would get you immediately called a racist. So, I'll call you a racist anyway because that is my takeaway from your pathetic comment. Why don't you not comment if your not going to say something witty, intelligent, or both? Throw out the term "bell curve" to condemn Africans to a life of subjugation. You want colonial rule in Africa again. Do you know about the holocaust of the indigenous people in South West Africa by Germans around the turn of century?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_South_West_Africa
Trumpit, rhhardin is a racist and a misogynist by choice. You, on the other hand, were born stupid.
Mugabe's gone. Now Franken can resign.
Mockedturtle, My knowledge of you is that you are a Christian Evangelical nutcase, and a very rude person. I don't care to know anything more than that about you, so I ignore you, and your foul mere-mortal existence. Imagine no heaven or hell, as John Lennon sang in Imagine. You wouldn't get in if there were.
3:02 & 3:37 PM
Sad
Why wasn't Mugabe shot like Nicolae Ceausescu was?
He deserves it just as Ceausescu did.
Mugabe moved to have his daughter replace him as dictator. The military moved first.
Trumpit said...Mockedturtle...
I enjoy her posts and I'm an atheist and your response re. Derbyshire was just witless crap.
So, I'll call you a racist anyway because that is my takeaway from your pathetic comment.
It actually is literally racist, in the original sense. The current sense of racist though means wishing the blacks ill, rather than thinking there are average racial differences.
Though the two senses are always both there at once, for the use of one political side or the other to equate.
"This is the right handle to take hold of the bunch" is offered for the one to cover the other, and so to dismiss it.
Henry Kissinger, in the 70s
"This isn't Africa's century."
So, Mugabe was the incompetent, yet black representative of a faction to defeat dissenting blacks, and provide moral rationalization for leftists to open abortion fields in Rhodesia... for minerals and other resources. It seems the Chinese have since offered something more viable. So, abort them NOW.
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