- Member since:
- August 31, 2006
- Total points:
- 37583 (Level 7)
Seeing Robert Mugabe from the point of view of him being an African hero is quite different from the despot that we all know him to have become.
What started out as a great plan, returning the land to black farmers and owners has gone sour and this is mainly due to the fact that a great deal of the farm land was simply handed over to Mugabe's henchmen who are not farmers. Hence the farmland remained (and remains) uncultivated.
White farmers were simply shoved off the land. Many have returned to the homelands of their ancestors, UK, Germany etc. Others were swiftly snapped up by other African countries including such as Nigeria.
Africa can only feed itself by modern farming techniques. I have seen on TV African farmers ploughing their small holdings with oxen and wooden ploughs. These methods (best described as Medieval at best) may supply food for a modest to large family, but they will not supply food for a nation or for export for profit.
What people do not take into consideration is the long struggle for African independence, which gained support here in UK way back in the 19thC - yes, even from such as George Canning - that notorious and cunning Tory - he wanted to dump the Empire and go full steam ahead for free trade for all. Didn't happen. Pity.
Meanwhile, the Methodist Church and the Labour Movement here in UK continued burrowing away and helping set up political education for those Africans who looked capable.
Mugabe was fully backed by the British Labour Party - he was in effect their 'baby' - now he spits in the face of the leader of the Labour Party, Gordon Brown.
Something has gone disasterously wrong and the root of the problem is not just Mugabe but the butchers who support him. The original aim and purpose of the 'revolution' have been lost to corruption and gangsterism. Death, starvation and disease stalk the promised land of Zimbabwe.
Both UK and USA are right to keep out of this mess and not accept the election result in Zimbabwe.
To understand the thinking behind the struggle for independence in Zimbabwe, you have to go back to the 18th and 19th centuries and study the anti-slavery movement here in UK and elsewhere. This same movement helped also in the struggle for the independence of African nations.
Take my own family, Welsh Methodists. Just ordinary folk, yet my Grandfather got into the British Army in 1898 at age 16 and went off to fight in the Boer War in SA.
Lord Kitchener was adamant in that he wanted to introduce a democracy in SA in which every man would have a vote - one man one vote as he called it.
The British Army employed thousands of Black South Africans to drive the waggons and so forth.
Before the British Army withdrew from SA - Kitchener issued every single one of those 'loyal volunteer Black South Africans' with a rifle and ammo. Because as he said, "when we're gone the Boers will be back".
Stupidly the then British UK.gov ordered the return of all the said rifles and ammo. Result, thousands of Black South Africans were killed or simply murdered by the Boers.
We all know then what happened. Repression, apartheid and etc.
It has taken years, generations to free SA from the yolk of slavery and apartheid.
Little wonder then that Africans see Robt. Mugabe as a hero.