Gateway Pundit: Zimbabwe Collapsing
This Gateway Pundit post about Zimbabwe is well worth reading, tragic though it is. This is certainly one of those cases where it seems like there must be something we can do to help, and yet there is nothing that I can think of that we can do that would do any good. (via Instapundit)
posted by Dave Justus | 5/24/2005 12:10:00 PM
1 Comments:
Dave, it happens that I agree.
We have a number of people in our circles who are ex-pat Zimbabwean and South African.
After reading the comments on the original post, one would get the strong impression that Zimbabwe is a simple case of "colour" - black vs white at its worst.
Talking with ex-pat Zimbabwes you get the other side of the picture, without any rancour or hatred. The problem that Mugabe faces (other than protecting the final remnants of his sanity) is a case of history catching up with the present. It is entirely of his own making.
You go back to the years prior to Independance, and you find that Mugabe was then the jewel in the common movement for independance. His power at that time was personal, his charisma was the power behind ZANU. He maintained that by promising that a free Zimbabwe would be owned by Zimbabweans.
After independance, Mugabe was for some years able to maintain a viable economy based upon the structures and activity that existed under the Smith government.
As time passed however, it came under increasing direct threat from his support base in ZANU. His failure to actively transfer land ownership from white to ZANU supporters led initially to government buy-out of land owners. That process was too slow for the rank and file and Mugabe was left hanging between trying to hold the last semblances of a civilised nation in one hand and the edge of the precipice to civil war in the other.
The interesting (and most frustrating) thing about the comment that you see in the 'net as evidenced at Gateway Pundit on this topic is the connection made (quite erroneously I believe) between Mugabe and socialism.
That misconception grew, I think, from the fact that Mugabe's government began the process of transferring land ownership to Zimbabweans by buying, at reasonable market value, selected "white-owned" farms and handing them to new (ZANU supporter) owners on suspensory loans. What became apparent very rapidly (as alluded in one of the little cartoons I saw) was that the new owners had little to no idea of how to keep these businesses running. (Hey, while I say this, remember I am talking 1980-90 not last year or five years ago).
What also became apparent was that the process was far too slow for the members of ZANU who were looking for their reward of heaven on earth - the power and riches promised in return for their support. The consequence was that more militant members of ZANU began taking their own action to claim land and wealth - whether with government consent or not.
The rationale behind the transfer of value was quite reasonable - Mugabe was hoping that he could encourage the farmers to stay; he knew that he was going to need their skills and knowledge. There is and was nothing of the "socialism" that has been painted by so many uneducated American commentators - it is far more akin to Nazionalisme than socialism.
So, a very large part of the problem in Zimbabwe is nothing more than the frustration of ZANU-PF followers who have had 35 years of promises of untold wealth catching up at long last with the perpetrator of those promises...
Solutions? I happen to agree - they are very few and far between. The Commonwealth Secretariat found that out in 1990 when they tried to expel Zimbabwe. A threatened walkout from the Commonwealth of the likes of Nigeria and Kenya resulted in the problem being tossed into their court. With a singular lack of success...
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