Death Throes of a Murderous Tyrant
"It's the West as usual", Robert Mugabe explained in Haarre to President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, on a surprise visit meant to convey the perturbation being experienced by leaders of other African countries. "When they criticize the government trying to prevent violence and punish the perpetrators of that violence, we take the position that they can go hang."Human rights workers in Zimbabwe are more than a little aware of the situation where huge numbers of Zimbabweans are starving, where police are being deployed to the countryside to put down any symptoms of unrest by attacking ordinary people at random. "The number of people being badly beaten up is very high", a doctor said under condition of anonymity.
"We're only seeing a tiny proportion of it. People are terrified of leaving their homes at night." Opposition to the government is growing, their leaders are becoming militantly determined to oust the murderously failed government of Robert Mugabe, meeting violent repression with retaliation, ineffective for the present, but a growing phenomenon.
President Robert Mugabe's mansion is the largest private residence on the African continent. Less than 10 miles from that residence starving people resort to hunting mice for food. Caused by Mugabe's having confiscated thousands of productive farms owned by white farmers, turning the land over to supporters with no interest in farming, resulting in a collapsed food production market, a collapsed economy.
Zimbabweans are facing mass starvation. Robert Mugabe cleaned up theshantytowns of Harare by driving out the million slum dwellers to starve elsewhere, in the countryside. Once renowned as the breadbasket of Africa, exporting meat and produce abroad in a prospering country and relatively well-off society, Zimbabwe has imploded.
Now mice trappers are able to sell their harvest of mice for meat at 12 cents apiece, a large sum for poor Zimbabweans. Two years ago there were about four thousands more deaths per week than births. The current famine has increased this life-disparity. It's a slow but certain demographic decline for the country which cannot support its population.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, head of the Movement for Democratic Change was taken into custody during a prayer meeting (political rallies having been banned) and beaten into insensibility, sustaining serious injuries, along with other members of his group. MDC supporters were imprisoned and kept incommunicado.
Mugabe's regime claims the MDC supporters had attacked police, leaving them no option but to open fire in self-defence. An activist described how the police had begun firing at the crowd and throwing tear gas whereupon the activists picked up the tear gas and threw it back at the police. "We charged them and then they fired."
Now Zimbabwe's political opposition and civil leaders are united to accomplish those actions that starving millions need to see justice done: "The final stage of the final push" to force Robert Mugabe out of office. Desmond Tutu has diagnosed the situation well, saying that African leaders should feel ashamed for their silence on the violence in the country.
"We Africans should hang our heads in shame," he said. "how can what is happening in Zimbabwe elicit hardly a word of concern, let alone condemnation, from us leaders of Africa?"
Labels: Political Realities
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, March 17, 2007
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