Broken Zimbabwe
One might think that the people of Zimbabwe have suffered enough. It would be interesting were some student of African history to make a comparison between how Zimbabweans fared under white colonial rule as compared to the manner in which they now fare under the dictatorial rule of Robert Mugabe. Under the guise of liberation and rule by an African patriot the country has been effectively and tragically brought to its knees.Not that there doesn't exist Zimbabweans with the education and the intellectual capacity to lead the country back into prosperity and respect for human rights. To re-locate it where it once was, when it was a breadbasket for its people, when employment was widely available, when agriculture was its wellspring of achievement and meaningful export production.
Morgan Tsvangerai did win the 2008 election despite that it was conducted as a democratic farce, which led to a recount and an eventual power-sharing government. But Robert Mugabe was always in control, and he demonstrated that control by arresting and jailing members of Morgan Tsvangerai's truly democratic Movement for Democratic Change, after the rigged run-off vote, promising change that never arrived.
The swift decline of the fortunes of the country and its people simply continued. The economy in ruins, with inflation making the currency worthless, and with a fortunate 6% of workers actually clinging to scarce employment. People are starving. Children cannot attend schools that do not operate. The life expectancy of Zimbabweans is now 36. Millions have fled to other countries.
Where, in South Africa, Zimbabweans are viewed with high resentment and become victims to night raids of South Africans determined to torment the desperate refugees, and drive them from their not-so-safe-haven in South Africa. Like Zimbabwe, which once presented as one of the wealthiest of African countries, South Africa too has lost the lustre of its promise under Nelson Mandela.
Where is the South African leadership potential now, under Jacob Zuma? Neither he nor his hapless, incapable predecessor led a movement of the African Union to usher Robert Mugabe from power, knowing full well how he was destroying the country and with it the hopes and aspirations of millions of people.
Robert Mugabe is determined to shatter the fiction of the unity government and remove Morgan Tsvangerai from split governance, absorbing once again all of the country's administration to himself and his thoroughly corrupt political cronies. In the run-up to an election, he and his party have been busy persuading terrified Zimbabweans just why it is a good idea for them to vote for him and his party.
Arrests, intimidation, threats, gang rapes, torture, are all part of the pre-election landscape. The hospitals that remain operative in the country flow over with the broken bodies of the maimed and the tortured. Atrocities against the people of Zimbabwe is the normal order of business for the Mugabe government, and fear stalks the land.
Zimbabwe's neighbours, intervening in the impasse between the reigning and the opposition parties, convinced Morgan Tsvangerai to agree to a unity government and that all would turn out well in the end.
In the end, there is only the end.
Labels: Africa, Chaos, Conflict, Corruption
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, May 10, 2011
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