The opposition party is not only claiming victory, but that they have exceeded the margin necessary to forestall a runoff election with Mugabe. My fear, is that if they stick to that, and Mugabe sticks to his line that the opposition has not exceeded that number, then they will come to blows. Mugabe, since taking over control of the country 28 years ago has turned Zimbabwe from one of the best African nations to one of the worst.
The military has long said that they will support whoever wins the election, but what will they do when two sides claim victory? Mugabe has been consolidating power in the military for years now, and there's a fear that they will side with him and put down any insurrection.
Personally I hope the opposition wins. Zimbabwe could have a lot going for it if they had someone else in charge. I'd love to see them go from a country that can't bake bread to a net exporter of food again, and so on and so forth back to how great things were 30 years ago.
Still...I fear this could turn to civil war if no one budges.
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posted
I had to go check wikipedia on what I thought I knew about Zimbabwe, since I thought I remembered it switching to that name about 28 years ago, and that does seem to be the case. Prior to that, it was named Northern Rhodesia, lead by a white majority. They were a sister state to Apartheid South Africa, having no recognition since rebelling against British Imperial rule.
Well, I am just not so sure that things were fine in Zimbabwe until Mugabe came along. I mean, I can believe he's corrupt and all that.
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The problems they're having with nobody being willing to even sell the goods (like basic staples of food) that people need to live can be directly traced to Mugabe. He was told when he started the policy changes what would happen.
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Pooka, it goes beyond corruption to stunning incompetency. Zimbabwe has the lowest life expectancy in the world, about 35 according to WHO. It's currency has the highest inflation rate in the world, currently over 100,000%. And it's gone from a net exporter of food to having 1/3 of the population dependent on the UN and NGOs to survive.
All of that is tied to Mugabe's idiotic policies.
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It's also just an awful time to be an African nation. There's a general food shortage, and obviously there's a lot more attention being paid by western nations to the Middle East than to the countries beneath it.
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And yet in some ways, it's the best time in the last 50 years to be in an African nation. Well, SOME of them. Some African countries are rather well run at the moment, and economic growth is realy spurring the construction of infrastructure and improving quality of life...but only in some places.
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Well, crap. In less than a week, my husband is going back to Northern South Africa, which has a had a lot of issues with an influx of starving, desperate people from Zimbabwe recently.
There is some fear that they could be a destabilizing influence.
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NPR was reporting that Mugabe's faction is spreading false reports that the opposition intends to return the white farmers Mugabe had forcibly removed from their lands.
This is going to get really, really ugly.
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The Chinese government ". . .does not involve itself in the internal affairs of other countries." Wow, I've never heard that from a Chinese spokesman before. Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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"...Except where... There's an enormous profit to be made... In the name of the great Communist Revolution..."
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FWIW, most Chinese in China are, from what I have heard, major racists, and probably don't even consider Africans to be human. I think it's probably the type of racism that comes from isolation.
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I've heard that too steven, but I've never spoken person to person with anyone actually in China, and I've never read anything by someone living in China to back it up.
I have it filed under "vicious rumor" at the moment, but I have heard it in other places.
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My boyfriend was in China last summer, and while I think it's more of a foreigner thing than a racist thing (especially since he's white) they were far too impressed with the fact that he was capable of using chopsticks "almost like a real person" and went to the bathroom just like everybody else for me to think that many Chinese (especially in rural areas) have much consideration for the humanity of non-Chinese.
Or these could be isolated incidents. It'd be hard to take a poll of a large enough sample size for any real data on the topic.
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Steven's short post has "from what I've heard" and 2 "probably"s so it's not convincing. FWIW.
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Lyrhawn - I mentioned that he's white because the discussion earlier was about whether the Chinese government would "consider Africans to be human," implying that the racism was against black people.
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I considered steven's comment to mean racist in general, not specifically against Africans, but that by way of that racism they probably didn't consider Africans to be human.
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I've heard the sentiment expressed for Asians in general. Steven forgot to add that it's a very polite racism.
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The US State Department has told Angolan and Namibian government reps that allowing the ship to unload the weapons at their ports could harm relations with the US. China is not commenting.
I really have to say that I'm impressed. Kudos to the US government for taking a stand and exerting pressure to support democracy in Africa, as well as trying to prevent violence from flaring up even worse than it is. I figured we'd stand blithely by and do nothing but give them a stern talking to.
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Barry Bearak of the NY Times wrote a good piece about his arrest for the crime of journalism.
quote: I was being charged with the crime of “committing journalism.” One of my captors, Detective Inspector Dani Rangwani, described the offense to me as something despicable, almost hissing the words: “You’ve been gathering, processing and disseminating the news.”
posted
I wasn't sure whether to start a new thread or resurrect this one, but apparently the migration this is causing has had a real destabilizing effect on parts of South Africa. The last I heard, there was a lot of tension in the area from the Zimbabwe immigrants, but apparently it has escalated into a lot of violence.
Is your husband still there, Olivet? If so, how is he doing, is he in one of the effected areas?
I've read reports of "necklacing," which was practiced a lot during apartheid as a lynching of sorts, where gangs fill a tire with gas, put it around someone's neck, and then light it on fire.
For as stable as South Africa has at least appeared in recent memory, it's amazing at how quickly it looks to have spun out of control. I guess some of this was lying just beneath the surface.
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*bump* What do people think of the way things have gone in the lead up to the run off? I've been listening on NPR a lot and it sounds like the incumbent government has been committing some pretty extreme abuses of power in it's attempts to stay in power. There has also been speculation of a military coup having happened and so on.
And what do people think of Tsvangirai's withdrawl? Personally I think it was the right move. There was no way he was gonna win and his and his supporter's lives were clearly at risk. He was right to seek sanctuary and bring the issue to the world court. Of course the question is now whether the world court can, will, or should do anything.
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Just so you guys know, YES that was around the area where my Beloved was, and occurred while he was there. They spend about half their time in Durban and half in Pietermaritzberg, in the KwaZulu-Natal province. He is fine, and never actually saw any violence.
However, the violence described was against foreigners from other African nations, as far as I have been able to tell. See, they were at 40% unemployment before refugees started pouring in, so there is a lot resentment against immigrants who have managed to find jobs (much like some Americans sometimes speak resentfully of Mexican immigrants for taking low pay for jobs we don't really want in the first place, only they DO want the jobs and are willing to kill for them).
I sounds scary, but we still plan to go there in the next three weeks, family and all, if things shake out the way we hope. No telling, though, really.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Considering the circumstances I guess it was a decent move, but Mugabe staying in power without an election also seems intolerable.
And the world refuses to act.
TIA
This Is Africa.
I hope there is something to Robert Mugabe that only a biography will unveil because I'm not very happy about the fact that I strongly dislike him.
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It wouldn't be much different if it were the Middle East, southeast Asia, South America or eastern Europe. How many times has the world got involved in a conflict like that in the last 30 or 40 years to help just because it was the right thing to do? It doesn't happen very often, regardless of where it is. We're far more likely to pay the dictator off and cut a sweet trade or military deal with them than we are to boot them out of office.
Even regionally, South Africa won't take care of it. Though I think they're getting fed up. Much like Darfur, we'll wring our hands and say "oh what a shame," and in this cause we'll wait for old age to fix the problem for us eventually, hoping that picking up the pieces will prove easier.
This is one of those things that I actually think should be solved regionally. I think the AU should do it, perhaps with financial and maybe some logistical support from the UN. I was surprised and impressed when all their neighbors denied entry to that Chinese boat laden with weapons. Clearly they don't want the situation any worse, if for no other reason than the effect Zimbabwe's problems have when they spill over borders, but I think it'll have to explode into all out civil war before they'd actually do anything to fix it, even though forcing Mugabe out, or even to have a real election, would probably be easier in the long term.
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