Modelling CommunoFascist Dictatorships
The Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu and his wife met their very sudden end at the hands of the very people whose interests they were purported, in their fervid determination to mould into a model CommunoFascist Dictatorship, to represent. In their case, justice was swift, and the country is gradually opening, determined to shed its sad history, its debilitated economy. Bringing to light also the sad and sorry plight of neglected, sick institutionalized orphans; babies and infants left to flounder and die, uncared for, hidden away, a symbol of a dying society. He was a proud protege of North Korea's brand of Communism."Dear Leader", Kim Jong-Il carries on the revered tradition of his father, immortalized in North Korea as "president for life (and beyond)", but did he have a hand in dispatching his father to attain his current station? One reads that Junior adamantly refused the entry of doctors to his ill father's chamber until after his death. And then arranged for untimely dispatches through a series of unfortunate 'accidents' for his father's bodyguards and the doctors present at the time. Traditions have a habit of carrying on.
Robert Mugabe, whom Kim Il Sung was happy to support in the 1970s, along with his ZANU guerrilla army, is himself happy to proclaim that "everything in Zimbabwe is associated with the exploits of president Kim Il Sung." Mostly because President Mugabe, who also aspires to be 'president for life and beyond' has patterned his administration after that of his former and much-admired patron. Proteges do not stray far from the paths designed by their heroes.
Mr. Mugabe thought highly of North Korean brain-washing skills and took great strides in his own attempts to emulate and even outdo them, in repressing political opposition. He launched a terror campaign in dissenting Matabeleland in the 1980s that included torture and murder, forcing villagers to enthusiastically sing ZANU songs while being beaten, while observing friends or family members being tortured.
Complete humiliation was said to be effective, somewhat like the Stockholm Syndrome, where a victim comes to a state of dependence and reliance upon the oppressor, to create loyalists for Mugabe through the expedient of forcing dissenters to assist in the process of torture and murder. Destroying their empathetic and compassionate natures through the trauma of forcing people to take part in behaviours entirely antithetical to their inborn sense of humanity.
Zimbabwe's economy was stagnant and going nowhere, entirely dependent on the agricultural acumen, hard work and economic success of a few thousand white farmers able to continue the agrarian tradition of the country which was historically celebrated as a cornucopia of the region. When Robert Mugabe decided that the state had the right and the reason to deprive white farmers of their property and turn them over to his supporters who knew nothing and cared little about farming the economy collapsed completely.
Zimbabwe, with an inflation rate now of 6,000% is being legislated back into economic health. It's simple, really. Although manufacturers have been going out of business because they cannot afford the price of raw goods with which to manufacture their goods, Mugabe has decreed that the higher prices they have imposed to take account of higher operating costs through scarce energy resources and more expensive materials, must be lowered. Half would do nicely, he's decided. Amounting to looting by his supporters of the produced goods.
The occasion of his birthday must be celebrated, for he too has branded himself as "our dear leader", and the country of starvelings and homeless and hopeless indigents without food or medical care or opportunities for education or employment must celebrate right along with him. Feasts are staged where ample food is available to friends at court, while outsiders celebrate, on the verge of complete physical collapse.
When the World Food Programme initially offered to help Zimbabwe's starving population in 2004, Mugabe's haughty reaction was to ask "Why foist this food upon us? We do not want to be choked, we have enough". Zimbabwe, close to utter economic collapse, its population desperate, and no international investors anywhere on the horizon because of its administration, is now completely dependent on foreign food aid.
Ever alert for the faintest whiff of dissent or the potential for rivalry of his position of primacy, Mugabe engineered the untimely death in June of Brigadier-General Armstrong Gunda, formerly commander of President Mugabe's presidential security guard. Members of the guard, evidently, were 'implicated' by government sources in a plot to overthrow his reign. Yet nothing seems to be even close to loosening this monster's iron grip on power.
Not Zimbabwe's economic meltdown, its political insanity, the fate of its beleaguered people, the contempt in which he and his ruling elite are viewed internationally. Zimbabwe's African neighbours may feel unsettled by the total, insanely injurious breakdown of governance and the unhappy situation of the population, but they've placed a finger over their lips, and are sitting on their hands; a tough manipulative act of see no evil.
Killing off one's perceived adversaries, beating and jailing opposition politicians and their supporters, having no regard whatsoever for the well-being of the country, consigning to early deaths the bulk of the rural population, for the happy expedient of acquiring and accumulating ever greater riches by Mugabe and his cohorts in the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party blots the continent with an indelible stain of shame.
Labels: Political Realities, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, August 12, 2007
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