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Robert Mugabe has snuffed it

dudalb said:
Mugube is the ultimate textbook example of "Power Corrupts;Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely".
Sadly, he not the only example of the leader of a anti colonial movement becoming a tryant once the colonial power is kicked out; that seems to be a common scenario.
Algeria,Vietnam (which managed to spawn 2 corrupt and dictatorial regimes for a while) The Congo,the list goes on.

And if you really want a contrast, compare him with Nelson Mandela....
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One could also (noting contrast pointed out earlier) compare him to Seretse Khama.
 
dudalb said:
Mugube is the ultimate textbook example of "Power Corrupts;Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely".
Sadly, he not the only example of the leader of a anti colonial movement becoming a tryant once the colonial power is kicked out; that seems to be a common scenario.
Algeria,Vietnam (which managed to spawn 2 corrupt and dictatorial regimes for a while) The Congo,the list goes on.

And if you really want a contrast, compare him with Nelson Mandela....
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The tragedy of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe is that due to the white governments intransigent refusal in the early days to treat with moderate black leaders, the only full on challengers to white supremacy were mugabe (backed by communist China) and Nkomo (backed by the USSR). With those kinds of backers, is a bad result surprising?
 
Giz said:
The tragedy of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe is that due to the white governments intransigent refusal in the early days to treat with moderate black leaders, the only full on challengers to white supremacy were mugabe (backed by communist China) and Nkomo (backed by the USSR). With those kinds of backers, is a bad result surprising?
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Not an unsusual scenario. France ignored the more moderate Arab leaders in Algeria, who might have been satisfied with reforms to give the Arab Majority in Algeria fair representation in the French Parliament and left the door open to the more radical FLN.
Or the British in their North American Colonies, come to think of it....they ignored the moderates and enabled the radicals.
 
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SOme of the attempts I am seeing in some comments section to make a great leader out of Mugabe are just plain pathetic.
One said he is a hero to most Africans. IMHO he is more of a negative example.
Same thing happened a few years ago when Idi Amin kicked the bucket....
 
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The Don said:
Yet another case of The Don getting it utterly wrong - though in my defence I was only 12 at the time.

The Smith regime in Rhodesia was so unpopular in the UK (presumably as a result of UDI) that when Zimbabwe became (officially) independent and held elections in 1980 I was really optimistic. Even in the first few years I had hopes that Zimbabwe would manage to be a multi racial country with a good economy - boy was I wrong :(

Not only has Mugabe ruined a country when he was alive and President, I believe that he has sown the seeds for its continued destruction for decades afterwards :mad:
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Zimbabwe ain't gonna be Wakanda any time soon, thanks to Mugabe....
 
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dudalb said:
Not an unsusual scenario. France ignored the more moderate Arab leaders in Algeria, who might have been satisfied with reforms to give the Arab Majority in Algeria fair representation in the French Parliament and left the door open to the more radical FLN.
Or the British in their North American Colonies, come to think of it....they ignored the moderates and enabled the radicals.
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Hell, the British in North America managed to turn the moderates into radicals.
 
Giz said:
No. His first mistake (and becoming the epitome of a dictator) was in 1982, after just 2 years in power, when he started the Matabeleland massacres of dissenters.
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His belief that capitalist agriculture would improve the conditions for ordinary Zimbabweans started before that. That's why the West loved him and wasn't too concerned about the massacres.
 
dann said:
No country in Africa is gonna be Wakanda any time soon, thanks to colonialism and imperialism.
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Not defending colonialism at all, but the colonial period ended over 50 years ago, and bad and stupid leadership in Africa no longer can use it as a excuse.
 
dann said:
His belief that capitalist agriculture would improve the conditions for ordinary Zimbabweans started before that. That's why the West loved him and wasn't too concerned about the massacres.
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Yeah, like the Marxist system of agriculture worked so great. It managed to turn Russia from a food exporting nation into a food importing one, and CHins still has not fully recovered from Mao's Great Leap Forward.....
 
I am not trying to deny the horrid impacts of imperialism in Africa, but am saying enough time has passed for that to no longer be an excuse for bad management and just plain stupidity.
And the decision by many African leaders in the days after indepdence to model their economies after the Soviet/Maoist model was truly a disasterous one.
 
dudalb said:
Not defending colonialism at all, but the colonial period ended over 50 years ago, and bad and stupid leadership in Africa no longer can use it as a excuse.
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No, you're just defending imperialism, colonialism's younger brother. That is the wonderful thing about partisan thinking. Partisan thinkers don't even notice when they contradict themselves:

dudalb said:
Yeah, like the Marxist system of agriculture worked so great. It managed to turn Russia from a food exporting nation into a food importing one, and CHins still has not fully recovered from Mao's Great Leap Forward.....
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Yes, time is a wonderful excuse for colonialism and imperialism, but not for (allegedly) socialist countries. As an industrialized country, Russia was able to become a food importing nation, quite an accomplishment, actually, considering their starting point, and China seems to have recovered pretty well, economically, unlike the majority of colonialized countries. (But the majority of the Chinese haven't.)
Continued population and/or income increase have pushed the United States, China, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom up the list of the Countries Who Import the Most Food.
Countries Most Dependent On Others For Food (World Atlas)
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dudalb said:
I am not trying to deny the horrid impacts of imperialism in Africa, but am saying enough time has passed for that to no longer be an excuse for bad management and just plain stupidity.
And the decision by many African leaders in the days after indepdence to model their economies after the Soviet/Maoist model was truly a disasterous one.
Click to expand...


"enough time has passed" for denying the impacts of imperialism in Africa, apparently. But enough time will never pass for the initial mistakes of the USSR or China to be forgotten. But let's just pretend that African nations are all poor because they modeled their economies after the Soviet/Maoist model, even though Zimbabwe certainly didn't. Even though Mugabe pretended to be a Marxist (which had some people in the West worried, at first), he put his complete trust in the capitalist agriculture run by white farmers, and they certainly thrived even though the rest of Zimbabwe didn't, which is why you resort to your fall-back argument: mismanagement!

And that is how you "deny the horrid impacts of imperialism in Africa" while pretending that it isn't so. Congratulations! What a fine accomplishment from a pretend moderate.

By the way, how many years did it take the USA to not get proper health care? How many years did it take for the USA to not eradicate poverty? What is the time frame we should consider? 50 years? 100 years?


ETA: Why are so many people in developing countries poor?

ETA: Modern imperialism in Africa (but in German)
Why Mugabe has to be removed (Also in German)
 
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Information Analyst said:
Don't feel too bad, lots of people had high hopes at the time. Norman Beaton once gave an outstanding performance as Mugabe in an unusual drama documentary from Channel 4's Dispatches back in the day, that took a very positive line. I expect that it hasn't aged well.
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As did Stevie Wonder in Plaster Blaster. "Peace has come to Zimbabwe".
 
bruto said:
There was a deadline back in 2016 for the last day you could turn in your 100 trillion dollar bills.

There was a point when the inflation rate hit 79 billion percent.

If it weren't for the bodies, you could look at it almost as performance art!
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IIRC, those notes had a greater value sold as novelty items on eBay than they did as currency.
 
dann said:
No country in Africa is gonna be Wakanda any time soon, thanks to colonialism and imperialism.
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Huh? It was colonialism that brought civilization to Africa. There had been people living in Africa for 10 of thousands of years. Are you saying that Africa would have just magically taken off in the last few centuries if Europeans didn't show up?? Africa took off because of European colonialism. As the best leader Rhodesia ever had, Ian Smith, stated,

"To those who say derogatory things about colonialism, I would say colonialism is a wonderful thing. It spread civilization to Africa. Before it they had no written language, no wheel as we know it, no schools, no hospitals, not even normal clothing."
Ian Smith
 
The Don said:
Not only has Mugabe ruined a country when he was alive and President, I believe that he has sown the seeds for its continued destruction for decades afterwards :mad:
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It seems very likely, but at least with him dead there is a slim possibility that things might get better.
 
McHrozni said:
Don't worry, you are not alone. The history repeated itself twenty years later in Venezuela. Millions of people around the world still adore Hugo Chavez who did the same for his country, using the same methods, with the same reasons, yielding the same results. Both are venerated as perfect leaders by varying groups of people (African supremacists / Fanatical Marxists).

McHrozni
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Mugabe and Chavez; true BFF's:

Caracas, Venezuela - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez praised Zimbabwe's embattled President Robert Mugabe as a "freedom fighter," bestowing the visiting African leader with a replica of South American independence hero Simon Bolivar's sword.

"I give you a replica of liberator Simon Bolivar's sword," Chavez said Thursday after the two leaders signed an energy co-operation agreement.

"For you, who like Bolivar, took up arms to liberate your people. For you, who like Bolivar, are and will always be a true freedom fighter," Chavez said. "He continues, alongside his people, to confront the pretensions of new imperialists."
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