He's still there, still ruining his country...
Zimbabwe bank issues $10million bill - but it won't even buy you a hamburger in Harare
The official inflation rate is 25,000%.
It'd be funny if it weren't so tragic.
Seeing as we're doing a world tour of trouble-spots, what do people think?
How long do you think Mugabe will last? A year? A month? Till he dies?
For that matter, is the problem Mugabe alone? Will a new leader help things, or is the place too far gone without major regime change?
He's still there, still ruining his country...
Zimbabwe bank issues $10million bill - but it won't even buy you a hamburger in Harare
The official inflation rate is 25,000%.
It'd be funny if it weren't so tragic.
It might be worth buying one or two of those $10,000,000 bills. One day they might be worth a bit more than they do now, and if not - what great decoration!
It's all screwed up, in Africa. Without self-flagellation, it's largely europe's fault; we plundered the continent and then rushed off without really helping to sort things out. That's Belgium, France, Germany, Italy as well as us.
We took no account of tribal demarcation, so tribes that (of course) were bitter enemies, because next-door to each other, are forced to try and build a nation together, and elsewhere one part of a tribe is on one side of a europe-defined national border and the rest of the tribe on the other.
Then the countries suffered as the superpowers jockeyed for position throughout the cold war; self-proclaimed socialists could rely on Russia for support and materiel, and anyone prepared to take bribes from large american corporations could expect to rise to a position of influence in all but the most left-wing countries. (NB Mohammed F'wit started off selling Coca-cola in Egypt...)
Now China is using Africa as one element in its springboard to superpower status, challenging the US for global economic superiority. The money that's flowed into the country since 1945, together with the adolescent not to say juvenile administrative organs running the countries has created a degree of ingrained corruption that will take a good generation or two to die out, but the money coming in from China is going to delay that happening.
(Note to Rocky: not one word about religion.)
Well actually the Portuguese first c*cked it up in the 17th century.
Cecil Rhodes then took it from the Matabele people who had previously invaded the place.
As Southern Rhodesia it prospered in the fact that inferstructure and farming was good.
In 1980 Mugabe came in and the farmers were gradually kicked out - or killed, not being allowed to take money out of the country. One such farmer I worked with in the UK for a while.
Being a tribal place, once you kick out the "intruders" all you are left with is tribal wars and noone to make money...
So no supprise, country goes "back to it's roots" - then complains and asks for help...
Having kicked out intruders, why then ask those same intruders for help???
Answering this several ways:
If I were in a position to influence events - for example, as a highly-placed member of Zanu PF with strong connections to the military - I'd stage a military coup. Yes, it's so bad there at the moment that a military dictatorship looks like a good solution - go figure.
If I were the British PM - well, there's not a lot I could do. We have no prospect of military intervention (no power, and our armed forces are kind of busy), and the Zimbabwe regime doesn't give a monkey's about soft options. We just have to wait for Mugabe to die, and hope that his successor is more reasonable - basically, wait for a Gorbachev-equivalent.
The West maybe could have done something with Africa 10-15 years ago - we had the moral high ground, we had no serious economic competition, and we weren't engaged in two wars.
Now, we can do nothing apart from bleat, and provide enough food aid to hopefully avoid too much mass starvation.
I don't approve of solving problems by violence.
But those farmers were all people - or descended from people - that had seized that land in the previous 200 years because they were powerful enough to do so.
I have no idea what the tally is, but there were a lot of black people killed in Rhodesia between the 1870s and the 1970s, and those who weren't killed were treated as not much better than slaves, and while I'm sure there are plenty of instances of respectful and caring relationships between white farmers and black farmhands, the fact was that the wealth and comfort of these farmers was a direct result of the misery and disenfranchisement of the country's indigenous population.
When negotiating the cease fire, Mugabe and his negotiators were insistent that land reform must be included as part of the settlement. However, they were not able to get it. There was an under-the-table deal that there should be voluntary transfer of lands from white to black (a bit like when employers say they hope job cuts will come from natural wastage - yeah, right). Most whites simply ploughed on, hoping Mugabe would run out of steam or money or power. (It may be that many of them weren't aware of the under-the-table deal or wouldn't have accepted it had they known. But all that would have happened there is that they would have been slaughtered sooner as ZAPU et al took by force what others were trying to get them by mediation.)
Of course the whites all felt they were entitled to keep land that their fathers and grandfathers had carved out of the bush and made into profitable agricultural land. But that is not going to be the way things are viewed by somebody who's grandfather had rights over that land before your grandfather and his army took the land away from them.
Here is a very useful working example of irony (from the wikipedia article on Rhodesia)
"The work of journalists such as Lord Richard Cecil, son of the Marquess of Salisbury, stiffened the morale of Rhodesians and their overseas supporters. Lord Richard produced regular news reports such as the Thames TV 'Frontline Rhodesia' features. These reports typically contrasted the incompetent insurgents with the "superbly professional" white government troops. A group of ZANLA insurgents killed Lord Richard on 20 April 1978 when he parachuted into enemy territory with a Rhodesian airborne unit and landed in the middle of a group of ZANLA fighters."
You seen a map recently? Where do you suppose we should invade from, Mozambique or South Africa? I'm sure either of those will be happy to act as a staging post...
Anyway, my point was, there's clearly no conceivable way the West can intervene militarily, and Mugabe doesn't care about any other threats. So there's nothing the West can do.
Our only possible leverage is threatening to withdraw food aid - in which case we'd have to be prepared to kill lots of innocent Zimbabweans through starvation, in the hope that they'd then be desperate enough to remove him.
Ummm, isn't that true of all inherited estates in this country also? And for that matter, all land in, say, the USA not owned by Native Americans? And all colonised territory, everywhere? Australia, England, France... umm, well everywhere, now I think about it.
We only have to look at Northern Ireland to see where this sort of "you nicked our land" attitude ends up...
True, and I am sure the Shona thought that about the Matabele people invading, so does it go back to the Shona or the Matabele?
The thing is, if you take somewhere, make it your own, through physical force or political force.... Do not then complain and seek "bleeding heart status".
Get on with it and make it work.
Now the land is "unprofitable" - stop whinging, make it profitable (if you are able to) or ask the people back in who were able to do so.
Yup...
Can you imagine the UK having kicked out the Roman Empire, then asking the world for help because the inferstructure and overall finance in the country suffered.
It is a joke... Freedom for the people... doh, what do we do now????
Maybe if the current gov., asked for help in creating profitable farming etc.. then all cool, I am sure many people would like to help.
To whine and complain and ask for handouts, is not productive.
Leave them to it. It is a man made problem, it is an African problem, it is for them to solve.
We should not even be thinking about risking British service personnel lives on it, neither should the British taxpayer be footing the bill for any military intervention either directly or by proxy. It is going to take removal of the rot at the very top before things get better, but that is none of our business.
Neither should we be providing any food aid. Food is a weapon, the ZPF use food supplies as a weapon against anybody who doesn't support them, we may as well be sending them guns rather than maze. Any aid is also a complete waste of time and money and only makes matters worse. Something like $100bn per annum goes into Africa in aid - and something like $145bn per annum comes out again in corruption.
You cannot help people who do not want to help themselves. By sending food and aid all we are doing is hiding the real problem and prolonging the suffering. We may save one person today, but because it has solved nothing there will be two people holding their hands out next week. It is going to take mass starvation and mass death before Africa itself is forced to take notice and do something, all we are doing is delaying that day of realisation.
I now refuse to give to general African charities, I used to but it did no good. I need to see people helping themselves before they deserve any more help, if I supply a bag of maze then the government of the country doesn't have to.
Why is it there never seems to be enough money in Africa to buy food but there always seems to be enough to buy bullets? Every $1 we send in means that there is another $1 to come out again in corruption or arms purchases. If we are mug enough to feed their people then they are mug enough to let us, it frees up their money for much more important things!
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