Okay, so you just ventilated Mugabe. Now what?

Great Debates
101

What is your horse in this race, Argent Towers? Do you really believe there is not one guy in Zimbabwe who is fit to lead? Do you really believe Africans are unable to lead themselves? Any other countries you think need to be taken over by whites? Do you have any idea what western countries are doing nowadays in Africa?

I’ll tell you, they didn’t leave, and they play no small role in many of the continent’s troubles. Do some research on France and, say, Central African Republic or Chad. Nasty stuff that is still happening right now. Western countries (or Eastern for that matter) do not have Africa’s best interests in mind.

Look, we had situation X, which lead to problem Y.
Of course problem Y is not great and should be fixed, but the solution is not to create situation X again!

Things may get better for a while, but it won’t FIX anything. It will just submerge things again for a bit, until pressure builds up, people get mad, wars start, warlords start ruling and everything goes to hell again. Same input, same output. Why do you think it’d be any different?

Anyway, we still haven’t learned what needs to happen to create a stable, democratic, prosperous sub-saharan African nation. This is something history is still learning. The continent probably suffered the worst under colonialism, and is still very much in a state of transition. We gotta remember how young these countries are- my mom remembers learning them by their colonial names. Only a couple generations have had meaningful access to grammar schools, much less college. They have to find their path, and it’s not been easy, but eventually things will settle down and work out.

Remember that in my grandmother’s generation Europe was a cesspool of war, starvation and genocide. Things look bad now, but they are not hopeless. Things change faster than you would ever believe. Some of my friends in Cameroon remembered the days when nobody wore clothes. Now their kids are taking computer classes. Will their kids be in an economically booming democracy? Only time will tell.

102

I think the best argument against setting back the clock to Rhodesia is that it didn’t work the first time. Obviously, it wasn’t a sustainable political and economic system because if it was, it wouldn’t have fallen. Like **even sven **said, you are just going to wind up in the same situation.

I think the best solution to the problem in Zimbabwe is to leave them alone. Don’t send foreign aid, don’t interfere. I think we’ve seen that a lot of foreign aid will end up in his pockets anyhow so stop. I think interference in the past is a big reason that some of these countries are as screwed up as they are.

103

sub-saharan africa has nothing to do with it. It’s not like the rest of the world outside North America and Eastern Europe are awash in peace, love and wealth. One could be forgiven for thinking that the natural state of nations is to be any two of poor, violent or despotic, with some fortunates gettting only one and a few unfortunates getting all three.

104

Interesting point. When we speak of the West colonizing someplace, we say “the whities are up to no good again.” But, last time I heard, the US was only about 50% white. When people speak of the West as “whitey” I wonder what approximately 150,000,000 non-white Americans think about being “whitey?”

I don’t have much of a bone in this debate, but when we speak of the West colonizing a place, could we drop the “whitey?” The West is not white, however common whites happen to be. If we send a million people someplace, they’re not going to all be white.

105

This is what I’ve been talking about. What if we do nothing? 20 years of aid concerts and fund raisers and charities tell us that no matter what we do, we can’t fix Africa. The world doesn’t have, nor has it every really had, the resources to do what needs done in that country. These days, not only do we not have the resources, we don’t have the will or the courage.

The same goes everywhere. Iraq (though it’s too late for that) Iran, whatever. Keep your people on the ground there to keep an eye on what they’re up to, but as far as help? Nada.
I think, as the largest economy in the world’s history, that as Americans, we have a duty to help those who truly need it. Likewise, those we help have a duty to the American people (as well, of course to the people of other countries’ who donate) to use the vast resources being provided to them to actually fix the country. Once it’s determined that the resources are NOT in fact helping, turn off the tap. You can’t continue to feed people and expect them to grow their own food. There is a price for charity that is paid by the recipient. Africa owes the world more than it could ever pay. We do all of this out of a moral imperative to help our fellow man, when if we forced them, through their own necessity, to help themselves they could, indeed would, be better off in the long run.

106

In my opinion, you’re wrong on both counts. The world has the resources required, it’s just vanishingly unlikely to ever deploy them in the appropriate fashion. The western democracies will never sell their electorates on the idea of giving up a few comforts here and there in order to quadrouple foreign aid, and double spending on defence, and then send all those resources to stabilise and rebuild the poorer parts of the world - even though the sums of money are not huge in relation to what is spent on health, education and pork-barrel handouts to lobby groups.

And having a prosperous, stable, well-governed Africa is unambigously in the interests of everyone in the world - trying to sort out the mess there makes sense even if one has no morality beyond serving one’s own self-interest.

As for Africa owing anyone anything, or the idea that charity comes with a price tag - I think that’s probably a topic for another thread.

107

Unfortunately this is not true. If there was a stable, well-governed Africa we would have to pay market rates for their natural resources, and may lose access to some of those resources due to human rights/environmental/nationalistic concerns. The current method- with easy-to-buy leaders- benefits everyone except for the African people themselves.

108

I think you’ll find that typically it’s massively cheaper to extract most natural resources using modern industrial technology and infrastructure in a stable environment than it is to have stuff hacked out of the ground using 1950’s (or 1900s) technology and no infrastructure in the middle of a war zone. Once you start looking at dropping a couple of billion on a big mining or oil extraction setup, the very first thing you want is stability, roads, educated workers, and so on. Compare and contrast the oil operations in the North Sea versus Nigeria, for instance. Or look at how mining works in developed countries - not a lot of pick-and-shovel operations left. There’s plenty of companies making a fat living today from picking Africa clean, but all the money they earn is a fly-speck compared to how much would be available from a well run continent. Compare e.g. South Africa with some of the basket cases, and you’ll see the difference. That’s without even taking into consideration the huge costs and lost opportunities to e.g. Europe of living next door to a high-crime disease-ridden ghetto of a continent.

109

Unfortunately experience doesn’t show this out.

Educated Middle Easterners or European/American cowboy types (who know how to make money on the side) do most of the day-to-day management operations in Africa resource-extraction operations. The actual manual labor is almost unpaid- a ditch digger might cost twenty cents an hour- rarely cost effective to replace with technology. Infrastructure only needs to be maintained up to the point that it affects resource extractions. For example in Cameroon the largely French-owned cotton company owned the roads and maintained them exactly once a year before the cotton harvest- a village who’s bridge collapsed would have to wait until cotton time for it to get fixed.

And when cheap labor isn’t enough, companies don’t hesitate to use modern technology. There are oil extraction facilities as advanced as anything in the world in Africa. They just have to have their own power stations. And they do shit all to help the populace.

Of course a well run continent would make things richer and more South-Africa like for the people living there. But every single day I saw the last vestiges of the African tropical rain forests leave Cameroon, In a democracy this wouldn’t last- it’s one of our planetary treasures being destroyed for nice end tables. But it continues precisely because the companies extracting these resources are able to make direct deals with the government (give corrupt leaders money to use wen they are finally exiled to France) in exchange for favorable trade deals regardless of consequences.

Almost the saddest thing in the world.

110

What tends to happen in many third world countries and especially in Africa is that the brutal despot once out of office is replaced by the courageous,fair minded rational and honest ex opposition leader who promises a new broom and honestly means what he says until he gets his hands on the money and then he starts giving the plum jobs to his friends, relatives and tribesmen(After all its only fair that they get a few perks in return for all the hard years of struggle they put in)

He treats himself to one or two palaces,some limousines,a private jet,a helicopter maybe and salts away a percentage of the aid money “Just in case”

People at all levels of government now need financial sweeteners if you want them to do anything.

Want your property registered?Your kid allowed to go to school?
How about you dont want to be arrested when the police pull you over for no reason?
You know the score pay over the dash and life carries on.

As time goes on the percentages of Western aid money that disappears without trace on receipt rises dramatically.
The complaints that the West is not doing enough to help the needy population become more vociferous.

Hardware donated by western charities(tractors,ploughs,plant etc.)is sold off to friends or business aquaintances almost as soon as it is received because you know that no way on Earth is the stuff going to get to its intended destination so it might as well be you that makes some money out of it rather then those vultures further on down the line.

The head of state gradually increases his armed protection as the population no longer feel as friendly as they once did and all the top government jobs are now in the hands of his tribesmen,not as a reward so much but because the other tribes might try something given the chance and that something is likely to be a coup,not for the people but for their own particular tribesmen.

Unconstitutional political arrests become more frequent as does semi official and tribal violence to other tribes people and so the wheel turns …
Mugabe was a liberator once in the eyes of Western Liberals,as was Ayatollah Khomeni and Ho Chi Minh,not forgetting Mao Tse Tung of course.
They must be so proud of all that they’ve done to help the poor third world victims of Western Culture.

I wonder why they keep so quiet about it?

111

I’m not an official of any kind - I “toured” (really not an appropriate word) the region - Kenya, Tanzania, Mosambique and Zimbabwe for over a month and a half as part tourist, part student. I spent 15 days in Zimbabwe - and still keep in touch with two or three guys in Harare - and I’m sure as hell not going back, even at gunpoint.

The backing I was thinking about . . . Well, any new government establishing itself in Harare would need to do a lot of very, very unpopular things. Things that would not only go against, but directly contradict, the interests of the currently most powerful men in the region. Military leaders, financieers, profiteers . . . It’s an ugly list. Most of the military down there are rented muscle - military, ex-military, militias and even branches of international companies. If a finger made of money pointed in your direction, I wouldn’t give a boiled biscuit for your chances.

So, as such, you need a military presence. A NATO peace force in political upwind, Blackwater - whatever. You would need a presence to fortify Harare, to eventually start reclaiming the land around it, to secure airports and roads (so that food supplies could be airdropped in - we might as well be talking West Berlin here - and so on. Specifically, you’d need a force to clean the board, expendable outsiders who have a professional reputation to consider. A indigenuous force would be unstable, unreliable and already gathered under leaders with interests that probably don’t match your own by a wide stretch. To get anything, you would have to compromise. To get everything, everything would have to be moulded to encompass the desires of men who spend their lives leading brutal militias against their own countrymen. And that’s not acceptable in the parametres of my dictatorship.

And to get men - you would need money. Trillions of dollars; both in cash and in the form of goods, experts, consultants, teachers, nurses, doctors, police officers, engineers and so on. You’d become a country of debt on all sides. So you would need a benefactor. Promise the US a safe, friendly haven in Africa? (Plausible, but probably useless seeing as Zimbabwe has no ports and its relationships with its neighbours are all . . . atrocious. ) Promise the NATO and the EU a stable, politically safe southern-african country that will eventually prosper? Appeal to Russia and China for aid in return of a stabilized region and industrial mining rights? I don’t know. I would probably go for the last, as well as ingratiate myself with Saudi Arabia, because Russia and China carry a great deal of weight in the region. (Especially China, with their new African colonies and mining operations)

So, yes. A progressing military lockdown of key areas, starting in Harare, backed by Russia, China and/or the EU/NATO, accomplished by a professional mercenary army. That would probably be my starting point, as a Whitey Dictator. If I ran an indigenous post-people’s-revolution government, I’d probably just skip these step and go right to the content of my previous post, while sucking up the the EU and the G8.

112

It worked pretty well right up until the end but terrorists,and no I dont call people who rape white farmers wives and kids before their eyes before hacking them all to death for the crime of being White/or is it the crime of being farmers?freedom fighters.
That and economic sanctions brought them down at the last.

I always found it ironic that while the "Frontline "states,that is the Black African states bordering Rhodesia ,demanded that the West impose sanctions they themselves insisted that the sanctions would not apply to them because it was a major source of their countries income, sending sanction busting supplies overland to Rhodesia made all the more profitable by those very sanctions .

Hypocrites?
Mercanaries?
Thats sub Saharan Africa for you.

113

Your post surprised me until I read this last bit and realised where you were coming from!

Whilst its interesting to speculate on what you personally would do in charge (and i think as a white dictator you definitely would need a large military presence!*) it doesn’t really help. (Although I do realise that the OP can be read as asking for this kind of response, so no offence intended).

I think even a national unity government would need some sort of external ‘backing’ and I think it’s a really important question as to what form this would take. Military intervention, if it is needed, surely must come from within the continent. The same applies, realistically, to political pressure. It will be interesting to see what happens when Zuma gets into power. He’s a Union man, like Morgan, not a independence fighter like Mbeki and Mugabe. There are other reasonable leaders in the region who should be more involved. Outside of Africa interference should be limited to investment in the country, including form such places as China. The talks taking place at present are a compromise, to be sure, but represent a real chance. However, Mugabe has swallowed opposition in this fashion before . . .

  • Its interesting that many US ‘volunteers’ joined Rhodesian forces after Vietnam. perhaps we’ll see a whole new swathe of them in southern Africa post Iraq (the Brits are there already).
114

Well either the sanctions worked or they didn’t.

In fact they were fairly ineffectual, contributing only a little pressure towards the final negotiated end to hostilities. They also hurt neighbouring countries such as Zambia, which therefore did indeed resort to a fair bit of sanction busting, much of it fed directly to the liberation forces.

As to your terrorist jibe I haven’t heard that kind of language in a fair while, and when I did it came from white Rhodesians and South Africans who had had fled their respective countries in fear of black rule. Atrocities were committed by minorities on both sides. Let’s move on.

115

Cite?

116

Personally I wouldn’t say it was a jibe but a pretty accurate description of their methods.

As to the White Rhodesians fleeing the country in fear of Black rule it certainly looks as though they had the right idea doesn’t it.

I must have missed the atrocities committed by the White Farmers but as to the atrocities being carried out by "liberators"being the work of a minority could you refresh my memory on just how many white farmers and their families were taken prisoner after their farmhouses were overrun?

I understand all about the adrenaline of CQB so its not surprising that the "Freedom Fighters"didn’t always,or is that ever take prisoners unless they were young pretty and blonde.

After all it must be quite frightening for fifty,often drunk,young men armed with assault rifles,grenades,M.Gs and Mortars being confronted by a sixty year old woman armed with a pump action shotgun and a Webley revolver ,plus of course her equally young husband armed with a hunting rifle backed up by a few terrified Black farm hands who knew exactly what was going to happen to them if they were caught alive.

Yes so its no wonder that those brave lads behaved like a swarm of rats after each of their magnificant victories.
As to moving on they haven’t have they?

Those few white farmers left in the country are having their farms attacked and looted by armed thugs and themselves beaten and worse.

While the "Liberation"government forces stand by and watch or even join in.

And each time a White farm is taken the abysmal food production of the nation decreases that little bit more.

moving back to the Stone Age is NOT moving on.

117

Well it was very much regarded and used as one. Anyone whose armed struggle you disagree with can be defined a ‘terr’, including Mr Mandela. These people were fighting against what the UN called a ‘racist and illegal’ regime. Did the international community fail to notice they were just defending their innocent farmers against terrorism?

This only really works if you think that Mugabe’s government has fucked up because they are black. Do you?

Atrocities weren’t generally committed by farmers but by soldiers. Once again rape and torture occurred on both sides.

Look, most of the farm attacks you speak of ended in the 20-30 attackers being driven off by the 60 year old farmer and his wife. Mugabe and Nkomo’s guerillas were possibly one of the worst fighting forces to take arms in the 20th century.

If things were as bad as you say why did so many of the white farmers choose to stay in the country under their new terrorist overlords? It wasn’t exactly hard to pop southward. Even Ian Smith stuck around.

Mugabe fully deserves ventilation, and he and the 5th Brigade proved this in Matableland as far back as the early 80s. However their are many fine and intelligent people in Zimbabwe who saw their nation briefly blossom in the 80s and 90s. If we truly do get to ‘move on’ from the present crisis I hope they get the chance to try again.

118

I would be chuffed to death if they succeed,I’m willing them on but quite honestly I dont have high expectations.
I sincerely hope that I’m proved wrong.

119

I think there are too many old scores to settle. If Mugabe gets deposed, the first order of business will be to take revenge on him and everyone who was associated with him, for being such a horrible leader. Then…uh…revenge on all of the people who might have supported him, or might have…uh…known people who supported him, because, well, they were just as bad…and times are tough, you know…and we need food and stuff, and we might as well just steal it from those bastards who were pals with Mugabe…and their families.

Uh oh…they don’t like that…are those AK-47s? Shit, we’d better get some too. There, now we’ve even.

And so it goes.

120

I can just about understand the sentiment. But I think the extreme cynicism combined with an almost painful lack of first hand (or indeed any) knowledge leaves me cold.