Theme Week: African Liberation -- Promises and Betrayals

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

30 years ago today, Robert Mugabe and his Zanu Party swept into power in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, as part of the move of former European colony states to both independence and majority rule. He took the office of Prime Minister promising peace, prosperity and that his government would never seize the properties of the whites who stayed in the country.

It was evident early in his rule that none of these promises would be honored. In the early 80s, conflict among different factions led to severe violence and the infamous "5th brigade" known for forcing suspected militants to dig their own graves and for burning dissidents alive in their huts.

Mugabe has stayed in office as President and tried to alter the country's constitution to give the President even more power in 2000 -- moves rejected by the electorate. Most outside observers note that Mugabe's worst behavior has come since then with outright land grabs from white owned farms, crashing agricultural production, hyperinflation, and a 2008 election so marred by violence and corruption that the opposition candidate withdrew from the run off.

In 30 years, Zimbabwe has transformed from a reasonably prosperous society with social inequities from colonialism that held the first majority rule free elections in southern Africa to a stinking hell without the ability to so much as feed itself.

This isn't the way it has to be -- other states in Africa, not without their own troubles, have managed the transition from colony to independence much better and with much less of Zimbabwe's betrayal.

How did they do it and have they built models that can serve their blighted neighbors still suffereing under corrupt strong-man rule?

Comments

Clarification of the question

[verytwistedmind.livejournal.com]

Are you asking why did Zimbabwe fail or why have other Countries in Africa succeed?

Re: Clarification of the question

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Both.

Re: Clarification of the question

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I'd re-ask another question: Is the success of other African nations portable? Can we take lessons learned in successful countries and apply them to Zimbabwe (or, if Zimbabwe is too damaged, take "Zimbabwe immediately after independence.").

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

A bad aspect of the whole mess is it gives racist a smug feeling of righteousness.

Zimbabwe made the worst mistakes of all the African nations. It swung hard to the other direction is terms of "justice". The former "set upon" were just swapped with the former rulers and no sense of justice or law ever took hold.

If a nation is to survive it needs the rule of law to fall down equally upon every citizen with the ability for radical change to be muted and sensibility to overide passion. Africa, unfortunately had a lot of their gov'ts come about during an age where unbridled democracy instead of limited constitutional gov'ts was the vogue. So we really can't be surprised that the worst aspects of the people became gov't policy.

Really that's the trouble with any gov't. It's the people. A faithful man can walk through a whorehouse in Amsterdam and not commit adultery while a faithless man will carry lust anywhere he goes. Yet we see a faithless man in a whorehouse and we're shocked that there's adultery going on. I'd sooner see a monarchy led by a virtuous king than a democracy run by kleptocrats.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Which is why you need a system that can withstand both- you never know which people turn out to be.

[ccr1138.livejournal.com]

I'd sooner see a monarchy led by a virtuous king than a democracy run by kleptocrats.

THIS. And hope the monarch lives long enough to establish a system that is sustainable after he's gone.

[verytwistedmind.livejournal.com]

The problem with this well worded statement is that the king will eventually die leaving in place someone who will probably not be virtuous. We have historical evidence of this.

Whereas with a democracy, you have at least the potiential to change leaders every election. Thereby equalizing things sooner.

Aslo, I don't know that we can call Zimbabwe a Democracy.In 2008, Robert Mugabe's party suffered a defeat in national elections, but Mugabe retained power after his party's violence against opposition supporters caused the opposition candidate to pull out of a subsequent run-off

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mugabe

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

A bad aspect of the whole mess is that both superpowers were exploiting the Rhodesian War for their own ends, and the USA was on the side of the dictatorship. Mugabe is able to pull off his rhetoric because the USA happened to be backing Ian Smith, where his old Soviet backers are 1) no longer around, and 2) were backing the local independence movements and not the guys already oppressing the Hell out of the place. So.......

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

I guess I'll wait to see what mahnmut has to say on the matter.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

This was the rhetorical equivalent of ringing a door bell.

[verytwistedmind.livejournal.com]

You were right mahnmut comment was the money shot of this post.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

And he surely did not disappoint.

I split my elementary-school years in the two Congos

[3fgburner.livejournal.com]

I was a first-grader in Brazzaville / former French Congo, when the former Belgian / Zaire / DRC became independent. Congo-Brazza gained independence early in our tour. A bit over a year after we got there, they went Communist.

Meanwhile, the (currently called) DRC went from colony, to anarchy, to kleptocracy.

At that time, Kenya and Tanzania were also newly-independent, but by comparison were paragons of civilization.

If we want to talk about colonialism-as-corruptor, I would put forth the notion that how fucked-up a country is, depends to some extent on (a) who colonized them, and (b) when and how the colonial government pulled out. Zimbabwe is a bit of an outlier, in that most former Brit colonies are less messed up than the average former French, Belgian, or Portuguese ones.

Thoughts?

Re: I split my elementary-school years in the two Congos

[verytwistedmind.livejournal.com]

Absolutely fascinating. This needs to be a separate post in and of itself! I wonder if any research/comparisons have been done before on this.

Re: I split my elementary-school years in the two Congos

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

That is an interesting perspective.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Worth thinking about it.

I leave the question to our resident theoreticians, for example underlankers.

Re: I split my elementary-school years in the two Congos

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I would hardly state that the British have the golden touch of the colonial powers. Their policies led to at least one genocide and a string of wars between two nuclear powers in the Indian sub-continent and their legacy in China was such that it produced both the Taiping Rebellion and to a great extent the Kuomintang and PRC both.

And of course the United States is hardly a paragon of social virtue itself, what with allowing half of itself to remain dictatorial from colonial times to the 1960s and maintaining the British tradition of taking sledgehammers to gnats.

As for the white countries of the Anglosphere....New Zealand had a near-coup in the 1970s, Oz is one of the most racist countries of the Anglosphere, fully equal to the United States, and Canada is the one country of the entire crowd whose problems are the most minimal...because nobody wants to live in a part of North America colder than some parts of Russia. /snerk.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Zimbabwe's failure is all the more horrific when compared to the success of neighbouring Botswana. Sure, Botswana has its problems but it still remains an excellent example of how a government committed to democracy and the rule of law can help build a relatively prosperous nation. I have never been to Zimbabwe (very restricted visa regime) but I spent a lot of time in Botswana and I was impressed. In many respects it is even more well arranged than South Africa.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

OK this is going to be rather long, so I'll try to spill it over several comments...

First, some older points.

It appears that, despite all the cheering and hopes for a shift in the Zim politics, my earlier gut feeling had been correct (http://community.livejournal.com/politicsforum/1539463.html) and it turns out Mugabe is still far from being beaten (http://community.livejournal.com/talk_politics/225674.html).

My primary concern used to be that our (SA) previous government used to treat Mugabe as a buddy (http://community.livejournal.com/politicsforum/1955919.html), even despite everything he had done. An inconvenient buddy, but still one. No matter how much I dislike our current president, I'm glad to see some shift in SA's approach to Zim lately.

Zim is close to being a 'failed state'. With one leader and one party that has monopolized the political space, it's no surprise it has been compared to North Korea. When the country was 'born' out of the ashes of Rhodesia, there was much optimism that the country was going to work for its people and the people were going to work to build a new Zimbabwe not blinded by the past but challenged by the future.

So. If a person who died in 1980 was reincarnated today, what would he/she say about the state of Zimbabwe? Is Zimbabwe a failed state to the extent we can define the institutional, infrastructural and human capacity framework that characterizes failed states? Really, a lot of questions come to mind when assessing the economic and political health of Zimbabwe. Is Zanu-PF responsible for the failure of Zimbabwe to live up to the expectations of its citizens? Are Zimbabweans necessarily blind to human-induced failures? Has the opposition become Zanu'fied and hence the failure to develop a strategy to respond to the Zimbabwean dilemma? To what extent do Zimbabweans themselves understand the nature and depth of the Zimbabwean crisis? Who is corrupt in Zimbabwe? It's the last of these questions that I believe is a missing link that many people neglect when looking at the current developments in Zimbabwe.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

We wouldn't be mistaken if we say that Zanu-PF is not a party without the State. In other words, if Zanu-PF didn't have the control of the State, it'd wither as a party. If this wasn't the case, it would be difficult to comprehend how an outsider like Jonathan Moyo almost single-handedly took control of the State while the party looked helpless. When Gideon Gono took over as Reserve Bank governor of Zim, he also ran away with the baton and the party is also helpless. The party hasn't been able to build an institutional framework that is informed by real national interests but has left individuals to manipulate the State for their own selfish needs. Until now, Mugabe would've been fired a long time ago if he was a CEO of a company called Zanu-PF for failure to perform... and yet the members of the company have not been able to make him accountable.

The party's business interests have never performed and, if anything, Mugabe has never trusted blacks to be in charge. Instead people like Rautenbach, Glynn and Victor Cohen, Bredenkamp, Roger de Sar, Zed Koudinaris, Tony Kates, etc have been entrusted by the party to benefit from its business ventures. In fact, Mugabe didn't care about the economic health of his own party but was and is more concerned about remaining in power!

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It's worth noting the Rhodesian War also saw both of the superpowers exploiting the chance to use this as a proxy war. That both prolonged the conflict and made resolving it much more bitter, because both superpowers were more concerned with testing their weapons than either ending the war or the fate of the winners or losers. Superpower intervention when two were doing it was worse in some ways than today, because it's a fair bet which superpower would intervene here, but with the Hammer and Sickle crowd *also* burning and looting and pillaging the victims of the Superpowers were squeezed between Scylla and Charibdis.

[anadinboy.livejournal.com]

There are some very ruthless people exploiting zim. Some african states are too advanced for them to exploit, some are too dangerous, and zim is just right.
Mugabe was ok till some homo attacked him in london

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Yeah homo attacks could be pretty traumatizing and life altering events.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I find it interesting how many people who scream racism about some things that white politicians do have said jack shit about Mugabe's treatment of white African farmers. Did they get there honorably? No. Neither did the USA annex all of Central North America and Hawaii honorably. Yet by that rationale they should support Hawaiian Secessionism (which they don't).

It's worth noting, though, that there are several reasons for the dominance of strongman rule. First, the different peoples in these countries had precious little reason to find a common identity under colonialism even in reaction to it, second, for all the sashaying about liberty the colonial regimes were arbitrary mass-murdering dictatorships of the sort the 1940s saw treat Europeans as they treated others, and third the empires made no effort to instill democracy in the African colonies for the damn good reason theyd've been booted out on their asses if they'd tried.

Mugabe simply represents an extension of a trend prevalent elsewhere, and it is interesting that the United States, which cares so much about bringing freedom to dictatorships with lots of oil and that manage semi-functional societies despite a shitload of Hell happening to them spared no concern for white or black people in Zimbabwe.

Oh, and Ian Smith was a total schmuck who should have been given the Mussolini Funeral.