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Mugabe is our fault
I am not having a fit of relativism, but letâs be honest: Mugabe is our fault.When he had his opponents murdered in the â70s to eliminate competition for the post of head honcho we pretended not to see; when he was carrying out the genocide of the Matabele, we looked the other way; when he embarked in the whole-sale looting of the DR Congo we kept quiet; when he threatened and intimidated the judiciary, and bombed independent newspapers nary a word was spent to condemn him. The atrocities that soon followed were to be expected. The truth is, Mugabe has not changed at all. He has always been a bitter and revengeful arseshole, with very limited intelligence and full of contempt for the people of Zimbabwe. It was convenient in the early â80s to fete and praise him, hoping that this would keep him happy and he would not transform himself in the typical president for life; it didnât work - it never does - and usually it has the opposite effect on weak minds, who feel emboldened by the hypocrites who laud them. Even today, those who attack him feel obliged to recall how progressive and democratic he was at the beginning of his reign; but this, too, is a lot of politically correct poppycock. Mugabe, unintelligent but street-smart, had simply understood how to keep the aid money flowing; when it finished (with very little to show for it, apart from a few schools and hospitals) he had to find ways to entrench himself (he had already committed so many atrocities that could only feel safe by remaining in power) and had to start to take decisions: all wrong, all tragic, all stupid. Despite the numerous examples on the continent he could have learned from â have you noticed how all African dictators consumed and destroyed the initial enthusiastic aid money and the inherited colonial infrastructure in about 15 years from independence before starting to really act up? â he persisted in following the same route, pinning the blame for his failures sometime on the west, sometime on homosexuals, more often on imaginary âenemies of the peopleâ. Today Mugabe probably feels betrayed, and with reason. He must be asking himself: âwhy attack me now when you all knew from the beginning where I was going?â We should have acted a long time ago to avoid the ruin of the one country in Africa that could have lead the continent into the 21st century. Posted by: Ulatle Spuque6651 2005-08-26 |
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