There’s some fantastic coverage of the current situation in Zimbabwe in the lead up to the runoff Presidential election at the New Statesman this week – this link takes you through to all the articles.
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A background to Zimbabwe that gives a different perspective to the MDC than that of the mainstream media and British foreign policy.
http://www.cpa.org.au/garchve5/1082zimb.html
“In 1999 the “Movement for Democratic Change” was established. The MDC was
primarily the creation of the (white) Commercial Farmers’ Union and a
shadowy international body called Zimbabwe Democracy Trust. Although it had
a black person as its leader the white farmers switched their political
allegiance from the Rhodesian Front which was no longer a viable option.”
thanks to Bush Telegraph for the link http://bushtelegraph.wordpress.com/2008/06/04/support-the-people-of-zimbabwe/
New Statesman, eh Kim? That’s more like it.
I recommend this NS article by John Pilger as another worthwhile insight. Western hypocrisy certainly helps explain why Mugabe can still get a standing ovation from impoverished black Africans.
I think the guns at their heads are probably a factor too somehow. Zimbabwe’s like Burma. Shoot the govt. Sometimes it’s the only way.
I think the guns at their heads are probably a factor too somehow.
D’uh.
Shoot the govt.
That didn’t work too well in Iraq, did it?
HdeZfm,
My comment was not in support of Mugabe, although I would probably vote ZANU PF if I was a Zimbabwian.
Amnesty international provides plenty of evidence of systematic abuse of human rights by the Zimbabwe state and I in no way deny or justify this.
My concern is that freedom loving people in places like Australia have swallowed the illusion that MDC is a progressive, justice focused organisation that stands as the moral alternative to what has been caracatured as Mugabe’s personal tyrrany.
If the MDC gain government there will be an immediate mobilisation of the war veterans and their supporrters and Mugabe has already foreshadowed this. What might this mean?
An MDC government backed by international states and capital trying to undo the land reform process and return white farmers to their land and the reintegration of Zimbabwe’s economy with the global market, at the same time as repressing a nationalist resistance movement.
Is this the path for peace that so many are calling for? Will the MDC, who have already called for a military coup, respect human rights and democratic process? or will their priority be protecting foreign capital “in the interests of the economy” and brutally crush the opposition as the previous white government did?.
MDC may well have been formed a decade ago, but in that time their main issue has remained the civil liberties and constitutional rights of white farmers, which according to MDC and the western commentariate is essemtial to Zimbabwes economy, presumably because black people cant farm?.
The MDC program is for Zimbabwe to engage in global agribusiness, what the Rockefeller foundation is calling the “2nd Green revolution”, it is green because, unlike the disasterous 1st green revolution that was dependent on chemical fertilisers, this second green revolution is based on pest resistant g.m. crops so wont need pesticides, but still centrally controlled by agribusiness as was the fatal flaw of the first green revolution. Bill Gates’ new philanthropy is this incorporation of Africa into the global marketplace and agribusiness scheme.
Mugabe has expelled these programs, these systems of foreign domination, and been accused of playing politics with food aid for his resistance. The MDC holds these foreign agribusiness programs up as the lolly bag that will save the economy and bring prosperity.
What happened to HdeZfm’s comments?
Was that JG in disguise?
You don’t deny or justify ZANU PF’s systematic abuse of human rights but you’d still probably vote for them. Weird.
JT, I dont know whether black people cant farm or not but the evidence is that Zimbabwe was once the food basket of southern African and now it is a food basket case. I always thought that instead of running the white farmers off the land they ought to have purchased the land back and retained the white farmers as managers, (at least until black managers coul dbe trained up) something similar happened in PNG with some success after independence there.
“the reintegration of Zimbabwe’s economy with the global market”
The great English left wing economist Joan Robinson once said that there is only one thing worse than being exploited by multinational companies, and that is not being exploited by multinational companies.
John Tracey’s arguments, such as they are, are the great verities of circa 1970. The caravan has moved on, just a little bit, since then.
Will the MDC, if they get a chance, prove to be the salvation of Zimbabwe? Maybe, maybe not. But it would have to better than the venal mix of brutality, stupidity and corruption that exists as present. Mugabe, in the worst tradition of African dictators, has squandered everything and sought to blame others for his own miserable failures. And as always, there are people like John Tracey who use phrases of the type “I don’t support everything he’s done but … “. In past generations, some people on the Left said exactly this about Stalin.
Let’s be clear about this. Zimbabwe’s suffering, so unnecessary, so avoidable, is Mugabe’s doing. He deserves not merely to suffer an crushing electoral defeat but to be tried for his many, many crimes. The Hague beckons.
The major point in favour of the MDC is that they are NOT ZanuPF.
Zimbabwe is in such strife that nothing else should be required to attract votes.
While I hold no brief at all for Mugabe, we all need to remember that, at the time, he looked like a huge improvement over Ian Smith.
G M, PF and S
I have recently been looking at reports of human rights violations in Z, nothing comprehansive, just scanning. It seems that in most cases including Amnesty’s recent stuff makes no deliniation between a person in uniform engaging in official torture and a street fight between rival tribes or factions in community. Civil unrest, factional fighting and tribal warfare has been dishonestly described as state repression.
There is one major source of information in the media regarding the present violence – and that is the MDC which is a participant in the violence. The MDC attacks on ZANU PF have not been at all reported, any local ZANU PF militance has been reported as state violence.
Just look at how the war Veterens have been oppressing the white farmers and their civil liberties – not by way of Mugabe or state action but by grass roots direct action at the local level.
It is a myth that Mugabe is behind it all. The unresolved tensions of colonialism have in no way gone from Zimbabwe, it is still in a period of civil war against foreign capital and land ownership. The choice for Zimbabwe today as it was 20 years ago is between dependence of foreign capital and the global market or sovereign independence economically as well as politically. I support the latter.
An Australian paralell – I think ATSIC was corrupt but I still support the Aboriginal struggle.
And also, when Z was the the food basket to the world, the Zimbabweans only got the crumbs that fell through the cracks in the basket. While Z was producing great profits for the corporations that invested in Zimbabwe, the massive bulk of the indigenous populuation was poor and dispossessed from land, the causal factors of the revolution.
From a report in today’s Australian
“THE wife of the unofficial mayor of Harare was so badly beaten by the mob that dragged her and her four-year-old son from their home that even her brother-in-law struggled to identify the body.
The clothes she was wearing, her distinctive haircut and the blindfold that Zanu (PF) supporters forced her to wear as they firebombed her home gave the only clue to her identity.
Her battered corpse is testament to a brutal new tactic in the suppression of opponents before a presidential run-off vote on June 27.
In the past week the wives of at least three opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) officials have been murdered.
…
Zanu (PF) struck again in Jerera, a small administrative town in southeastern Zimbabwe, not two weeks after it opened fire on six MDC supporters in the local party office, poured petrol on to them and set fire to them, killing two instantly.On Tuesday night, said a Catholic nun who asked not to be named, they burnt down the home of the Catholic priest at St Anthony’s mission there.
At another Catholic mission farther north, she said, nuns had been ordered to purchase T-shirts bearing Mr Mugabe’s face, and wear them over their habits. They were forced to buy Zanu (PF) party cards for Zdollars 20 billion each, worth about 50p in Zimbabwe’s worthless currency.”
Notwithstanding, John Tracey would still vote for ZanuPF. And he thinks it would be so terrible for the Zimbabwean economy if it was reintegrated into the global market, because, as it we can see, it’s travelling so well now.
“it is still in a period of civil war against foreign capital and land ownership.”
Yes, Mugabe just needs more time. He’s only been in power for 28 years.
“at the time, he looked like a huge improvement over Ian Smith.”
Well actually at the time Smith had vacated the field and the choice was Mugabe or Joshua Nkomo, or Abel Muzorewa. But it must be said that Mugabe did win the first election fairly, or as fairly as could be determined at the time. However that was 1980. It’s now 2008.
“It is a myth that Mugabe is behind it all.”
This is self-evident. He’s a doddering old fart who can’t even read his speeches coherently any more.
He was, however, the man standing over it all, with the opportunity to unify, modernise, and build economic and cultural bridges between factions and tribes. Neglect is a form of abuse – neglect which vastly empowers one’s allies and deepens divisions for the sake of holding power is a disgrace.
Of course colonial history has lasting impacts, but your preoccupation with it is pushing you perilously close to apologism.
Well North Korea made the same choice as you wish for Zimbabwe and that has worked out oh so well for the North Koreans, hasn’t it?
“and that has worked out oh so well for the North Koreans, hasn’t it?”
Let’s not forget Burma.
It’s peculiar, this “sovereign independence economically”. According to some strains of Left thought, this is a Good Thing. Yet, the US trade sanctions against Cuba, which have done a truly excellent job in enforcing that country’s “sovereign independence economically” are a Bsd Thing.
Go figure.
whatever you say about him, he is remarkably well-preserved for an 84 year old.
“he is remarkably well-preserved for an 84 year old.”
Only from the neck down.
“he is remarkably well-preserved for an 84 year old.”
So is Kim il Sung, Eternal President of North Korea. Formaldehyde I think.
It strikes me that, whatever their other motivations or ideological stance, the fact that MDC are committed in principle to defending individual liberty is the main reason why they would be my strategic choice were I a Zimbabwean. Post-election is a different matter.
Whether or not Mugabe is the puppet-master of the current violence, he is politically responsible for it. It may be argued that there is little hope for individual liberty, or for that matter for economic justice for the majority of Zimbabweans, under an MDC government. What is clear is that there is no hope for these things under Mugabe.
Obviously what it means is that the “war veterans” and their supporters don’t believe in democracy and are not prepared to accept the people’s verdict in democratic elections.
And you laughably describe them as a nationalist resistance movement rather than what they are; anti-democratic thugs.
I’d love to have your take on the Burmese army’s response to the National League for Democracy winning Burma’s 1990 elections. The response of a nationalist resistance movement fearful of being brutally crushed by the new government, perhaps?
Thanks for the last two comments, Klaus K and GregM. Rationalisations like John Tracey’s for systematic murder, genocide (as Mugabe seems to have perpetrated) and other crimes against humanity I just cannot understand. Mugabe’s own people have tried for the last few elections to get rid of him and John would still vote for him.
Trying to paint him as a national resistance leader when the only thing he is resisting is his own nation just seems completely and totally intellectually dishonest.
Well said, Spiros and GregM
Robert Mugabe still appeals to the spirit of 1980. Africa has moved on. China no longer supports “anti-colonialist” liberation movements. Mugabe moved against Joshua Nkomo (older readers may remember him) fairly soon after independence and began massacribg opponents.
Another analogy on the “economic independence” angle is Pol Pot’s Kampuchea. Pol used to bang on about “independence-mastery”, but basically oversaw a slave state with very poor rations, low rice production, amateur irrigation projects, too little mechanisation, etc. Borders closed off. Major cities emptied. Govt radio railing against all kinds of foreign enemies.
The real enemies of the Cambodians tuned out to have been the Khmer Rouge leadership. The ‘leaders’ ate well while their compatriots starved, were tortured, or fled in despair. My impression is that Mugabe is of this ilk.
A good recent biography of Pol is http://www.metacritic.com/books/authors/shortphilip/polpot
But the point is that a majority of Zimbabwean people have chosen to vote for the MDC. Surely, whatever anyone thinks of them, they should be the government, until they’re voted out.
Fine, surely you cannot be serious. Or do you know something about the electoral process in Zimbabwe that I don’t?
Cambodia is a good comparison, and anyone who has visited that wonderful country and spoken with its poor, suffering but spirited people would no doubt empathise with plight of the Zimbabweans.
Just to qualify my statement: I disagree with John Tracey in terms of the politics of the situation, but in terms of making an historical argument (or even a moral one), I think the colonial inheritance is very important to understanding Zimbabwe as well as some of the other regimes mentioned here. Mugabe is a direct product of that brutal context, but he has perpetuated it in the inverse, and for that he bears responsibility.
Yes, I am being serious Adrian. Mugabe is threatening that he won’t hand over government. He really wouldn’t need to do that if the Opposition had won the popular vote in the first round.
Democracy, that process by which a citizen puts a mark on a piece of paper every several years is a British cultural structure and mythology imposed onto Africa. It is the democratic constitution itself that until recently entrenched white control of land in Zimbabwe.
This ritual of choosing politicians in no way provides the structure for the will of the people to be expressed and executed, it is simply the justification, the authorisation of an elite to govern on its own terms and priorities.
Democracy in Zimbabwe, like democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan or East Timor is an imperialist imposition to entrench the interests of corporations or the British, U.S. or Australian national interest. It has nothing to do with the rule of the people by the people and it certainly does not guarantee that Zimbabwe soil will be used to feed Zimbabwean stomachs rather than the profit margins of Agribusiness stockholders.
As Spiros’ update on the violence indicates. ZANU PF is not a political party like the ALP or a police action like Burma, it is a system of governance that involves people at the local level. The parliamentary presense is just the tip of the iceberg, the figureheads of the real local and regional structures of governance and war.
It is unrealistic to expect this national revolutionary infrastructure to dissolve itself because its political opposition wins an election. DMC, at best is the traditional British mode of divide and conquer employed in all their colonies. At worst, and what I believe to be the case, it is an aggressive plan to reintegrate white farmers into the global economy, claiming that Zimbabwe may again glean falling crumbs.
Why else are these white farmers so crucial to the Zimbabwe economy? What can they do that black folk cant? I suspect indigenous farmers may want to prioritise feeding their families, especially in these times of economic collapse, rather than fullfilling export quotas. But even if there was integration into the global market, why does this have to be on the terms of the white farmers rather than the economic and export development plans of a nationalist government or even indigenous entrepreneurs?. Why is it the Rockefeller/Gates way or no way when it comes to engaging in the global market? Why cant a single desk system in Zimbabwe deal directly with the economies of other African nations, China and even the E.U. rather than conform to what is expected of it by philanthropists and state aid and white farm managers?
How do you know democracy is a Western imposition?
What system do you propose that will express the will of the people?
Do you think Mugabe expresses the will of the people?
John Tracey – re: all your posts, but especially #28 – are you taking the piss?
John Tracey, what a glorious paean of praise for dictatorship you have provided. Every word of it can be applied to that happy land that is the Democratic People’s Repubic of Korea and the wise leadership of the Light to All Nations, the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. And also, at the risk of Godwin’s Law being invoked, the social organisation of the German National Socialist Workers Party under their wise leader.
Canada? New Zealand? Australia? Colonies all at one time of the British. I had thought that their getting representative government on a parliamentary model was a step towards self-government and finally independence but it seems that you interpret it as the traditional British mode of divide and conquer. According to your reasoning the ALP should configure itself as a national revolutionary infrastructure with local and regional structures of governance and war. It would show the poms that we have seen, at last, through their fiendish plan to subjugate us. I can see now Kevin Rudd as our Beloved and Respected Leader leading the revolutionary masses to a glorious new era. And of course, as in Zimbabwe, if they will not follow they can starve.
But back to Zimbabwe and its economy though.
Grow food for one thing.
Before Mugabe and ZANU PF dismantled their farming infrastructure Zimbabwe was self-sufficient in food and a net exporter. Now it is an agricultural wasteland, it does not have enough food to feed its population has millions of its people living as economic refugees living in neighbouring countries and millions more starving.
And whose policies, do you think, are responsible for these times of economic collapse in Zimbabwe?
They can’t deal directly, through single desk or otherwise, with other African nations et al because they have nothing to sell. They have nothing to sell because their agriculture sector has collapsed and they can’t produce enough food even to feed themselves. And whose economic policies do you think have lead to this state of affairs?
Do you know anything at all about either agriculture or economics? Or about the basic responsibility of a government to at least see that its people have enough to eat?
Ghandi -
Well it worked well enough in getting rid of Saddam. The problems that came afterward were a result of the fact that Iraq is really three countries who hate each other – civil war, that the Americans conned themselves into believing it would be easier than it was and ignoring the possibility that Saddam would adopt the strategy he did and above all that it is under foreign occupation.
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I was not suggesting some kind of neo-con adventurism altho’ I will say I’d be a bit better disposed to the neo-cons if they had fought for democracy in a country that wasn’t so conspicuously well-stocked with oil.
.
What I was suggesting was something I almost never think is necessary but is here – revolution.
Democracy doesn’t actually exist in Zimbabwe for starters. There is a nasty interplay between corrupt governance and the exploitation of national resources by private interests backed up by, say, the American Department of State. This is true. The setting up of a puppet-regime in Iraq which then signed away its oil dirt cheap is a good example of that. It’s also worth noting however that there are other players, China for example. Pressure can be brought to bear by consumer activism in democratic countries: boycotting companies that take advantage of terrible situations to make a fast buck. Try that in China and what it gets you.
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Democracy is a reality and there are too many people who dismiss it as bourgeois crap using neo-imperialism as a reason. Democracy does not do away with reprehensible or ammoral activity. What it does is make governments answerable to their people. And it gives people a space whereby they can take said activity to task and stop it.
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Certainly there’s been some nefarious use of the term by neoconservatives who talk about bringing democracy to the world whilst rolling it back at home – but just because someone says ‘democracy’ when they’re talking about a puppet state or ‘free market’ when they’re talking about entrenched oligopilistical domination of that puppet state and the rape of its resources at the expense of the people doesn’t mean that the idea of a stable state, wherein there’s the rule of law, guaranteed rights, the seperation of powers and free and fair elections is bad. It’s not. It’s good.
.
And just because it’s a Western idea doesn’t mean it’s imperialism. By that logic the Japanese are imperialist stooges because they use electricity.
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Zimbabwe ain’t a democracy it’s a totalitarian nightmare dominated by a Butcher God-King who’ll do us all a favour when he drops. Neither is Iraq, Afghanistan or East Timor btw – they’re war zones.
Two v. recent reports June 12 & 18 from IRIN (UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) with background on the food shortage generally and also that in the run-up to the run-off prez. elections, Mugabe is buying or has ordered 300K Mt of maize from South Africa and has apparently told supporters the Govt is buying 600K Mt.
Not coincidentally: “In May, the government suspended humanitarian operations, including feeding schemes, after it accused nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) of “political activity.”
The cynical & abject callousness of this type of manipulation of basic food staples is so beyond my experience to properly express anything except – there by the grace of. And hopefully people aren’t going to be swayed by their Govt’s newly found concern for like, their survival.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=78714
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=78794
Greg,
You attribute much to me that is perhaps a contruction of your own preconcptions than anything I may have implied. I find your reference to Nth Korea to be similar to Bush’s notion of the axis of evil – an emotive trick that lumps all enemies in the same box and demonises the box with the predictable reference to NAZIsm.
My comments have been about the MDC, not Mugabe. Can you or anyone else really say that a party fighting for the rights of white farmers in an African country is the path to democracy?
I have noted your and others repulsion at the Mugabi regime but why do you unquestioningly endorse the MDC agenda?
As for Canada, N.Z. and Australia. In all these cases self government was an institution of colonial society, not the indigenous society. Aborigines were not even recognised as full citizens here until 1967.
I say it is a racist comment to say that black people cannot grow food.
John Tracey -
Actually it could be. There’s no reason why it couldn’t. If said white farmers are pushing for a genuine democracy, not some kind of return to apartheid I’d say it’s a possibility. The issue is not who are the interest groupd backing this or that party. There are always interest groups involved in parties. Most interest groups are dead partisan and many are dominated by people who’re not interested in democracy. However they will all submit to it as they understand that without they may possibly be margialized and oppressed.
.
The relevant issue is the structure of the State: elections, rule of law, freedoms of the press, rights blah blah. Mugabe ain’t into that and his country is fucked as a result.
Not really relevant and overly simplistic. The countries you mention were able to self-govern because the Brits had learnt their lessons courtesy of the USA: a compromise by Empire with democracy. That Aborigines weren’t recongized is an anti-democratic function of racism. In 1967 democracy won.
Change of tack:
John Tracey – can you please list the good things that Zanu PF has achieved for Zimbabwe?
Adrien,
Within the wisdom of “anything is possible” it could be that the white farmers are a vehicle for African democracy but I am afraid you will need more than this kind of naive hope to convince me that DMC is not the Empire striking back. Look at the History of the MDC and those who support it internationally today. I tend to put more weight in my analysis to such things than your , again naively hopefull, belief that the vested interests will somehow succumb to the will and needs of the people through the democratic process.
also,
The indigenes of America had nothing to do with the squabbles between English migrants in America and the English crown just as Australian indigenies have not at all been considered in colonial notions of Australian sovereignty right up to the current republic re-debate.
FDB,
They overthrew British colonial domination. ZANU PF is a coalition of many revolutionary groups that fought to overthrow white minority government.
Therefore, and let’s not beat about the bush on this, you have called me a racist.
And you have shown from doing that that you are completely ignorant about what racism is.
The white farmers who you, as an ignorant racist (let me return your comment), excoriate can grow food in large volumes because they have been trained in the techniques of agriculture that developed with the Agricultural Revolution beginning in England about three hundred years ago. That revolution was the product of opportunity and enquiry at the time which led to the development of scientific methods of agriculture based upon observation and measurement. There is nothing about race to explain why this happened in England initially before other places. It would have occurred anywhere else where the circumstances of opportunity and enquiry converged. However it meant that there developed a suite of transferable skills which made agriculture extremely productive and allowed the accumulation of large surpluses for sale.
However, since times immemorial farming has been a property based family affair, handed down from father to son (and very rarely to daughters), something as true of African farmers as it is of white farmers. Therefore in Zimbabwe at the time Mugabe decided to wreck its economy those who had the skills to carry out industrial scale agriculture were white farmers. There is no reason why, had they been trained in the disciplines of industrial agriculture, and had access to the land needed on which to practice it, that African farmers could not do the same.
However, under Mugabe, when he decided to seize white-owned farms, that essential skills transfer had not occurred. Had he delayed until a cadre of skilled black Zimbabwean farmers had been developed ready to take over, and he let them to do so, he could have undertaken an expropriation that would not have (much) disrupted Zimbabwe’s agricultural production and its capacity to feed his people.
But he didn’t wait until Africn Zimbabweans were skilled up to take over. He seized the farms and there was no one trained to take them over, so they fell into ruin and ceased to be productive agricultural units. So now millions of Zimbabweans starve.
But that’s OK with you. What does it matter to you if black people starve so long as it gives you a way to get at whitey. It’s pretty clear that black people are just a means to an end for you.
And you have the cheek to accuse me of being a racist.
John Tracey
I am not naive John and I’m not hoping for anything. I didn’t say that white farmers are a vehicle for democracy in Zimbabwe I said there’s no reason why they can’t be. If they help institute democratic structures then they are. And yes you’re quite right. They will need more than hope. They need guns and bullets. Whatever Mugabe might’ve achieved in ze revolution he’s well and truly fucked his country now. Unfortunately there’s a pattern whereby revolutionairies end up being worse than the former masters precisely because the apparatus of democracy is forestalled by them. Please see Animal Farm as an illustration of the process.
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I’m not sure whether you’ve noticed this but the Empire ain’t there any more. The processes known as ‘neo-imperialism’ which is what you refer to tend to be assisted by fubar situations like Kleptocratic autocracies, entrenched corruption or eternal civil war. In fact if you examine the history of this ‘neo-imperialism’ you’ll find that it opposes the establishment of democracy.
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Your notion seems to be that white people can’t possibly bring democracy into an African country. Why not? Times change. There’s nothing inherently ‘evil’ about people with low levels of melanin. If the structures of democracy described above are in the interests of what is now a racial minority then they might very well pursue it. I’m not saying they will. I’m just saying the fact that they’re white farmers doesn’t mean they won’t. Also I seem to observe that the opposition to Mugabe is mostly by persons with dark complexions. Imperialist stooges perchance?
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Again your references to indigenous peoples are both true and immaterial to this discussion. It’s dopey syllogism. White people made the British Empire, White people made democracy ergo: Democracy=British Empire. Will you be demonstrating that Socrates was a cat in the near future?
John
They shouldn’t be able to continually use their liberation credentials as a crutch – a dominant party system such as that which exists in Zim, SA and Japan is not healthy for democracy
John Tracey,
GregM and others didn’t say black farmers can’t grow food. There is more than one contrast to make here. We can contrast the productivity of white farmers with black farm workers, against the current productivity – which has plummeted. Have you heard that many Zimbabweans are starving?
But there’s another contrast we can make: that between Zimbabwe, where soil and circumstances used to favour agricultural output, and OTHER African countries with good soil, good rainfall, good farming methods; where BLACK farmers are successfully feeding their own families and selling their surplus food.
What is the salient difference? The policies and practices of Mr Mugabe’s regime. Colonial legacies fade away into irrelevance, against that looming and disastrous factor.
But if you insist on re-living the independence struggle John Tracey, tell us your estimation of Joshua Nkomo, and his ZAPU. (ZANU wasn’t the only prominent anti-colonial party.) Tell us about the massacre in the early 1980s [Matabeleland??] when Mr Mugabe’s true colours began to emerge.
Adrien wrote: “Your notion seems to be that white people can’t possibly bring democracy into an African country. Why not? Times change.”
Hear, hear! One spectacular example was when a white South African president negotiated with a black prisoner, to bring majority (democratic) rule to their nation. It was an important turning point for Africa. Imagine that, John Tracey: a powerful white man gave up much of his power, knowing that a convicted criminal was likely to benefit. And also millions of downtrodden black miners, farmers, teachers, children.
Ambigulous. majority rule was won in South Africa because the alternative of mass violence was not in the interests of the white minority, not because of any sentiment to democracy. The same reformist white government was crushing black resistance only a few years earlier.
Greg did indeed say black people cant grow food @ 31. Then he justified his assertion @ 39. And Greg, what I said, and I stand by it was “I say it is a racist comment to say that black people cannot grow food.”
And regards to ZAPU and Nkomo. Again, I am not apologising for the Mugabi regime, my comments are about MDC. As you indicate, ZANU PF is a broad church including ZAPU who co-founded it. The nationalist sovereignty movement is not a figment of Mugabi’s imagination or a manifestation of his ego nor is it without its own unresolved internal conflicts. it is a very broad and diverse movement that still has considerable electoral support. But the point of unity between Nkomo and Mugabi was sovereignty. The brutality of Mugabi’s maintainence of power within the sovereignty movement in no way justifies the movement to reintroduce colonial paradigms.
Why does criticism of the MDC provoke such a backlash?
Are the enemies of Mugabi really the friends of freedom and democracy simply because they are the enemies of Mugabi? Have the multinational corporations and their facilitating states really given up on dominating global resources? The CIA orchestrated the coup in Chile against a socialist government, why is it so outrageous to suggest such a thing mught be occuring in Zimbabwe?
Interesting questions, John Tracey, but difficult to take seriously without some evidence. If Mugabe is to be understood here as another Allende you’re going to have to do more than ask questions.
Quite right I did. As is obvious from the fact that the people of Zimbabwe are starving. That’s just an observation of fact.
But that’s not their fault, anymore than it would be my fault that I couldn’t make a living from fishing because no-one has taught me how to do that.
It is the fault of Robert Mugabe and his racist enablers and apologists (of which you are one) that when he took over the white farms he had not had the foresight to ensure that there were trained up and motivated black farmersready, capable and allowed to take over running those farms.
You however falsely attributed to me that I thought that their race as being the reason for their incapacity to do (normal blame whitey mode of the racist), rather than their self-evident lack of skills -and in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, opportunity, since whatever they grew would be stolen from them as part of the ZANU PF patronage racket anyway- without any justification but since you make a living out of the racist “blame whitey” game what else could we expect from you?
Fine @ 29 sorry, I missed your questions earlier.
“How do you know democracy is a Western imposition?”
If democracy is about parliaments, presidents, constitutions and private property then its history is easy to track to European parliaments. African Village, tribal, regional and pan-African structures have existed for millenia in Africa before the English system of parliament and bureacracy was introduced into Africa.
“What system do you propose that will express the will of the people?”
This is exactly the same discassion as for Aboriginal representation in this country. I say regional electorates or constituencies based around tribal land and territories whereby tribal elders maintain a role in government at the local level, but thats just my opinion. The legitimacy of African culture, like Aboriginal culture, is the cornerstone of indigenous sovereignty. When people have real control of the economy and politics of their local community then there is real democracy, not the seasonal box ticking of western democracy.
Cuba, Libya and in particular Venezuela have all developed municiple structures federated at national levels. Westminster is not the only model of government available.
“Do you think Mugabe expresses the will of the people?”
Which people?
Mugabe represents ZANU PF which represents a broad coalition of groups and organisations throughout Zimbabwe with an agenda of sovereignty and self determination.
There are obviously many who do not support Mugabi or ZANU PF. Except for the white farmers, I do not believe MDC represents these peoples interests but, in the traditiion of western democracy, seeks their mandate to pursue the agenda of MDC’s masters, those who have supported and funded their campaign and on whom the Zimbabwe economy will again be dependent if MDC can defeat the land reforms.
I don’t think charges and counter-charges of racism are particularly productive here. I think GregM has resolved the ambiguity of his initial response, and I don’t see any evidence that John Tracey’s positions is ‘racist’.
Klaus, using black people as a stick so that you can hit “whitey” is about as racist as you can get.
I put up a post @ 34, which got moderated with some links to v. recent IRIN pieces on the food situation.
Apparently Mugabe is buying up maize from SA before the election (see 34) after stopping NGO feeding programs late last month. Just the latest in a long program of manipulations:
“Archbishop Pius Ncube, the outspoken Roman Catholic prelate of Bulawayo, accused Mugabe of withholding food for electoral purposes, distributing it only in areas where people could be bribed to vote for the ruling ZANU PF party. “They want to control the food and politicize it,” he said. “They’d rather kill people for the sake of power.” (from a March 2008 article)
And this sort of blatant lying via a Despatch Online report 18/6/08:
ZIMBABWEAN vice-president Joyce Mujuru has accused lazy farmers of leasing their land instead of cultivating it, causing food shortages in the country. She also accused the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) of making it difficult for farmers to access seeds and fertilisers.
“We are aware that some of you are having problems like procuring inputs in time. It is because of sanctions imposed by western countries at the behest of opposition party leader Morgan Tsvangirai,” she said. The United States and European Union have imposed targeted sanctions against President Robert Mugabe and approximately 100 members of his ruling elite. With the exception of a weapons embargo, there are no economic sanctions against Zimbabwe.
John Tracey,
I do not see much in your comments that constitutes a critism of the MDC beyond a few aspersions cast on its roots – roots in which you (apparently) carelessly miss the ones in the Zimbabwean trade union movement.
What I do see is an awful lot of rationalising of the murders and genocide committed by th acolytes of Mugabe, such as Chenjerai “Hitler” Hunzvi, Perence “Black Jesus” Shiri and several others.
Perhaps you can torture the truth – but not as well as Shiri tortured the Ndebele people.
This is very new – dissenting statements from long time allies (from NY Times 20/6/08):
“There is every sign that these elections will never be free nor fair,” Mr. Membe (Tanzanian Foreign Minister) told a news conference in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania’s commercial hub, saying he and his colleagues would urge their presidents to “do something urgently so that we can save Zimbabwe,” Reuters reported.
Mr. Membe said the three southern African countries had reached their conclusion on the basis of reports from 211 election observers inside the country, some of whom had seen two people shot dead in front of them on June 17, Reuters said.
Tanzania, Swaziland and Angola are members of the Southern African Development Community and form a committee entrusted with regional peace and security.
And lastly……apparently according to this article white Zimbabwean farmers are being welcomed elsewhere in Africa:
http://www.newfarm.org/international/news/2005/030105/0307/mugabe.shtml
“The demise of Zimbabwe’s farming sector has seen white farmers head for the diaspora.
Deprived of their livelihoods, some have moved into the capital Harare to start new businesses. Others have been welcomed elsewhere in Africa. Hundreds of farmers moved to neighboring Zambia, others to Mozambique, Botswana and Malawi. Others have gone further still to Nigeria.
Some African leaders have encouraged Zimbabwe’s farmers to move, but, fearful of criticism from Mugabe, have done so discreetly. In Nigeria, farmers can claim up to 1,000 hectares of fertile land and borrow over US$1 million at very low rates to get them started in the continent’s most populous nation.
“It’s an attractive offer,” said Gemmill. “The markets up there are enormous and the demand for food huge.”
John Tracey,
You haven’t bothered to say what you think of Joshua Nkomo and his ZAPU party, which was separate from ZANU, though allied in the independence war. And you pass over in silence the massacre Mugabe authorised in the early 1980s. The signs (and actuality) of his despotism were evident VERY EARLY in his rule. How is it that one man can be the best leader of a nation for 30 years? It happens very rarely in real democracies. It happens routinely in dictatorships. As do kleptocracy, economic disaster, starvation, poor planning, propaganda against external and internal “enemies”.
Good on the neighbouring leaders and Foreign Ministers for, at last, speaking out against Mugabe and his sham “electoral” process. Are those black leaders all tools of the imperialists and colonial powers and the vicious white Rhodesian farmers, John?
We don’t know how the MDC will behave when its election is finally confirmed, but weary and starving and beaten Zimbabweans are entitled to choose “ABM” – Anyone But Mugabe. Only when his dictatorial, repressive organisations and practices are dismantled will the true breadth of democratic opinion in Zimbabwe emerge. It may then be that the MDC, having ushered in a taste of freedom and ordinary non-violent politics into the nation, will lose the next election. Who can say? As long as the next election isn’t like the last several, and a vast improvement on the current run-off brawl, all the better for all Zimbabweans.
It’s not unusual for the thuggery of a revolution or independence war to carry over into the new society: others have mentioned some instances. But John, that doesn’t mean we should condone the thuggery and deaths. And please note that this does NOT always happen; it’s not inevitable at all. Zimbabweans have the same rights to eat food and grow crops and have jobs, as Australians do.
John Tracey, in response to my request for a list of Zanu PF’s achievements for Zimbabwe, offers this:
“FDB,
They overthrew British colonial domination. ZANU PF is a coalition of many revolutionary groups that fought to overthrow white minority government.”
They’ve had just shy of 30 years to add to this achievement. Anything else? How long would you be happy to wait for something more? You’ll notice I’ve stopped referring to the bad things they’ve done – you seem to have something of a tin ear for that topic – but really, is that all you’ve got?
John Tracey wrote:
“Ambigulous. majority rule was won in South Africa because the alternative of mass violence was not in the interests of the white minority, not because of any sentiment to democracy. The same reformist white government was crushing black resistance only a few years earlier.”
[this he wrote in response to:
"Adrien wrote: “Your notion seems to be that white people can’t possibly bring democracy into an African country. Why not? Times change.”
Hear, hear! One spectacular example was when a white South African president negotiated with a black prisoner, to bring majority (democratic) rule to their nation."]
Well John Tracey, the point Adrien made remains. Times did change. As you wrote, the white regime in South Africa, which had been ‘crushing black resistance’, ceded majority rule. So Adrien’s point stands: times change, and occasionally white men “bring democracy”, or “concede democracy under pressure”.
You seem to have a static view of Africa, John Tracey. e.g. Mugabe was a hero in 1980 so we should support his actions in 2008. He has carte blanche, you seem to suggest.
Well, Africa is dynamic. At least that’s what I see when I observe that continent.
As far as I can work out, a dictator only has to use some “anti-imperialist” or “anti-colonial” or “revolutionary” rhetoric, and you’re happy to fall in line and march with him. Whereas some of us prefer to consider actual events, hunger, liberty, daily circumstances, or even – crikey!! – commonsense; as aids to understanding (however partially) what’s going on.
cheerio
John Tracey -
This is such gratuitous over-simplification. Where is your evidence for this assertion that there was no ’sentiment to democracy’? Exactly how did the white minority, faced with mass violence, avoid it simply by converting to democracy or more accurately broadening the franchise? It seems to me that if the sentiment was to some other form of government there would be nothing the white majority could do but flee.
.
Can I just ask: Do you support democracy? Where are you coming from?
Oops. That’s white minority.
Coincidentally, given the direction of this debate, I found an old yellowing piece of newspaper tucked into a book this morning, and this paragraph begged to be parlayed:
“Why did former president F.W. de Klerk decide to move South Africa down the path towards multi-racial elections? Not from the goodness of his heart. It was because the governor of South Africa’s Reserve Bank informed him that financial sanctions had left the country with six weeks of foreign reserves and no prospect of obtaining further credit overseas.”
The author was Bruce Haigh, writing in The Australian in 1997.
While I would love to discuss the benevolence and social justice inclinations of the South African apartheid government, that bastion of freedom and human rights, it seems my comments are being moderated and my last comment has been withheld, so I won’t disturb the delicate sensitivities of the editors on this subject any more.
I have just re-read the MDC program on land reform, economic growth and foreign investment and I stand by everything I have said.
John Tracey, you asked “why is it so outrageous to suggest such a thing might be occurring in Zimbabwe?”
Just another answer: Thomas Mapfumo – The Lion of Zimbabwe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCHErRa-6HA&feature=related
(v. good sound on this youtube clip btw.)
This national hero and teh songwriter of the revolution, whose music inspired black Zimbabweans to rise up against white rule, and whose use of traditional music forms and language was also revolutionary & who shared the celebration stage in 1980 with Bob Marley, was however by 1989 releasing anti-Govt records having become disillusioned with the new Govt by that stage. His 1989 ‘Corruption’ LP marked the turning point.
He was held for a period by the Smith regime causing protests and has likewise been harassed by Mugabe’s regime, in recent years to such an extent that he like millions of other Zimbabweans now lives outside the country. The Govt often bans his music and records being played on State Radio, all to no avail. Such is the influence of artists like Mapfumo, that the Govt organises recordings of pro-Govt propaganda records to try and counter his and other’s influence.
Anyway, google up Thomas Mapfumo and Chimurenga music.
Mbira rules ok!
http://worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com/worldmusic/view/page.basic/genre/content.genre/chimurenga_707
C’arn fair go. John Tracey hasn’t said anything out of order. And this is interesting.
I doubt you’ve been censored John. I’m sure an admin will dig out your last comment.
Any chance it answered or in any way addressed my question?
Well that last one got through but the previous one is still in moderation.
FDB, no the response was to fine earlier.
I don’t know why you are insisting I give a defence of Mugabe, I have already said I accept there is state repression. I repeat, my comments are about MDC. You seem to have a tin ear to discussion of MDC. All I have said is i would vote for ZANU PF as nearly half of Zimbabwe did. Perhaps I should have said i would not vote for MDC but I would suspect that would still see me labled as a NAZI sympathiser.
regarding Mugabe/Nkome, this was a tribal war. British style democracy means there can be only one president for that area defined by lines on maps drawn up by European colonisers. Within these lines on the map are several tribal groups and lands who must come under the authority of the one person at the head of state. This competition for power between different tribal groups, wholly created by the imposed colonial mode of governance, has been a, if not the, major cause of disunity and dysfunction in South Africa also.
The ZAPU massacres, like so many tribal wars and genocides in Africa, is a direct result of tribal competition for control of imposed structure.
In terms of the state repression of the present regime, above and beyond local groupings and citizen militias, it is the framework of European statism, including military, police and prisons, which Mugabe relies on for his government’s greatest crimes. It is the centralised state imposed by the British that allows Mugabe to reign as a state terrorist.
Only by a retribalisation of land and politics in Africa can there be peace. The MDC platform specifically attempte to extinguish communal title to land, traditional agriculture and traditional political structures.
John, if you use the word “moderation”, your comment goes into moderation. It’s to discourage discussions about moderation. I’ve fished them out now.
You agree that he reigns “…as a state terrorist…” yet you would still vote for him? If this is the case are there any crimes that would rule anyone out of order and not worth voting for or is there no line at which you deem anyone unacceptable?
The position you have got to almost beggars belief.
I’m digging and looking for traces of more nuance than that Andrew. Really the most charitable reading of John’s position I can come to is:
“I’ve got some reservations about the MDC’s policies, so I support Mugabe”.
Well look John, here’s the thing. That’s PRECISELY the reverse of what everyone else here is arguing. If you can use that reasoning, so can I, and say:
“I have some reservations about Zanu PF’s proven 28-year history of divisive and bloodthirsty rule, corruption, election-rigging and intimidation of any opposition, extending to bashings and murder… so I support ABSOLUTELY ANYONE ELSE unless they promise to be worse than Zanu PF.”
By the way, you say you don’t see the need to mount a defense of Mugabe. Some might be uncharitable and suggest this is because no defense is possible. Not me though, I’m sure you’re just keeping your powder dry.
Oh, so the structures Mugabe uses are a damned legacy of the Brits, eh?
Funny that dozens of other nations, never ruled by Britain, also have recourse to police force, courts, army, state radio, etc.
This is what you wrote, John Tracey: “it is the framework of European statism, including military, police and prisons, which Mugabe relies on for his government’s greatest crimes. It is the centralised state imposed by the British that allows Mugabe to reign as a state terrorist.”
Your broad brush is too broad. Many other natoons have military, police and prisons but DO NOT mistreat their citizens in the manner of Mugabe. How does your “argument” account for that?
In Pol Pot’s “Kampuchea”, there was no police force, no court, no money… the colonial legacy of France had been expunged; the rule of Sihanouk had been obliterated; yet strangely enough an even WORSE repression than we see now in Zimbabwe occurred. The shadowy rule of ‘Angkar’ – the organisation – terrorised the country. There were plenty of your beloved “local militia” but all answerable to Angkar.
Democracies can be very imperfect, but they don’t have a track record of sstoping that low. Checks and balances. Rule of law. Separation of powers. *yawn*
FDB,
I think you also forgot “support for insurgents fighting against the elected governments of neighbours and the naked theft of the diamond and other mining assets of the DPR Congo.”
Personally, and I may be wrong, but John Tracey’s position does not seem to have much in the way of nuance. I would say it amounts to “No-one but Mugabi [sic]“.
He also seems to be holding on to the fact that the recent election results, released by Mugabe’s hand picked commission, gave him a reported 43% of the vote. John Tracey may be close to the only person on the planet that seems to give them much credence.
John Tracey,
Likewise been reading through the MDC policies eps. in respect of Land. I’m voting MDC.
You just can’t go back to some idyll pre-colonial time (as if it existed anyhows), the population levels might get there I ’spose if enough leave, or die of starvation or are bashed to death in police cells.
The MDC’s policies read like any western social democratic party’s policies. There is probably enough to piss off all sides – trying to modernise their economy (and re-build in this case) and look after the poor and all social justice issues.
http://www.mdc.co.zw/downloads/POLICIES%202008.pdf
The only thing that matters here is that the MDC has the support of the majority of the Zimbabwean people and that Mugabe and his henchman, who have destroyed Zimbabwe, are murdering the MDC, their families and their supporters, so they can destroy it some more.
The MDC’s policies (which seem pretty good, by the by, especially in comparison) are a 10th order issue.
Thanks Mark, but the first comment did not contain the M word and the one that got through did contain it??
I respect and support that there is a difference of opinion here, and I am glad that at least Jo has examined the MDC platform. However, i suggest that my positon is not as isolated as “close to the only person on the planet” as has been suggested. While I have no faith in the accuracy of the poll results, it is simply wrong to imply that ZANU PF’s support base is insignificant. Furthermore, the response of South Africa and the SADC has accepted the need for change in Zimbabwe, they have not endorsed MDC. Is it just because the other African states are scarsed of Mugabe that they have not taken stronger action? Or is it because they do not support MDC’ program as solidly as England, U.S. and Aus do?. The MDC platform (in Jo’s link) identifies that MDC has contrary opinions to SADC on foreign investment (although I have no idea of the details of this conflict) but they are entering SADC with an intention to reform their frameworks, or at least operate in defiance of it.
What this discussion here chooses to ignore, which perhaps the African states may not be so eager to dismiss, is the history of economic domination of Africa.
This is not a matter of ” some idyll pre-colonial time” but of the history of the last century and the structural causes of Africa’s poverty today.
Those old folk like me who rememeber the green revolution and the world bank’s plan for the economic development of Africa in the 70s, and remember the famines caused by it, may not believe the development rhetoric of the same corporations and western states today.
While the west can say that such history of imperialism and colonisation is irrelevant compared to the starvation today, and the quick fix of signing up to the World Bank and IMF’s plans for the Zimbabwean soil is the only choice to make, there are other perspectives that put more weight on historical and economic analysis.
The MDC plan is to incorporate all viable farming land into a global agribusiness scheme. Traditional farmers will be “encouraged” to give up subsitance farming in order to produce money to buy imported food. This is the terminology of their platform, in Jo’s link, not a cynical caracature by me.
Do any other oldies remember the Nestle boycotts of the 70s and 80s? In line with development plans for Africa, corporations such as Nestle encourage third world women, not just in Africa, to give up breast feeding and buy milk formula with their modern wages. Millions of children died of starvation because their mothers milk had dried up but they couldnt afford the formula. There was no food to eat from the family garden because it had been reduced to a chemical dependent monocultural cash crop for export, which collapsed.
MDC is reproducing these disasterous policies.
It seems LP and other fora can discuss in intricate detail the policy difference between The U.S. democrats and Republicans, even the nuance between Obamma and clinton. However for some reason the dumb thud of the Murdoch line and the wisdom that if its not Mugabe it must be good is somehow considered intelligent political comment about Zimbabwe. I humbly suggest it is not quite that simple.
I’m with Spiros, this John Tracy has to be taking the mickey.
Nobody could be so clueless.
Here is the plan for Africa, the real agenda.
“Africa’s Turn
A New Green Revolution for the 21st Century”
http://www.rockfound.org/library/africas_turn.pdf
by the Rockefeller Foundation
In short – Multinational corporations (such as the rockefeller network) supply patented genetically modified seed with pest resistance and high nutritional yield. The plant is infertile and no seed can be harvested for any future crop. The farmer has to buy more from the corporation.
When a crop fails, by drought or such thing, where does the farmer get the money to buy more seed? They can only go into debt. Having neglected traditional and free crops, there will be no food for even basic sustainance let alone regenerating a new commercial crop.
This new plan is a repeat of last century’s green revolution
Sustainable agriculture is not a matter of returning to farming practices of hundreds of years ago. For example, the permaculture movement, an Australian invention of the 20th century is a mode of agriculture that is being used for commercial crop production around the globe. Apart from ecological issues of biodiversity the permaculture mode, for example, does not involve dependence on seed and fertiliser supply by multinational corporations. Sovereignty is an agricultural issue too.
Another perspective that the defenders of the free world may not find so warm and fuzzy.
“Expressions of Imperialism within Zimbabwe”
http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/expressions-of-imperialism-within-zimbabwe/
John,
That link is just woeful.
I also fundamentally disagree with your assertions in respect of the MDC’s policies however, others can read the policy document for themselves, but more importantly as Spiros posted, it doesn’t matter a jot what the policies of the MDC are.
I will say however that the beauty of a democratic system, is if the MDC policies prove to be unpopular, in few short years Zimbabweans can vote them out. Fancy that.
I’m also not going to waste hours, nor days debating the ‘old swim through a river of snot or drink a bucket of spew’ choice as to which side of the Evil EmpireTM was responsible for the most deaths, wars and famines on the African continent over the past 60 years.
Africa – where the Cold War was never cold.
Onwards and upwards. Just hoping that some external regional pressure is finally getting through, and that the violence is racheted down. You can only hope.
John Tracey, that link is hilarious. Surely it’s up to the Zimbabweans to decide their future and as others have pointed out if the majority vote for the MDC, than that should be respected. You seem to keep avoiding this point.
John Tracey,
Continually using the excuse of what happened 3 or more decades ago for current activities of wholesale repression really shows how weak your argument is (IMHO). You seem to be saying that it is OK (or at least excusable) to carry out crimes against humanity if your ancestors were repressed by people that may be related to those who carried out the repression.
I would suggest you tell that to the Ndebele people.
I also note you have not tried to rebut accusations of genocide, mass murder and crimes against humanity. I will take that, and the concession of state terrorism, as agreement with them.
Andrew,
I used history to critique MDC policy, not justify Mugabe. It is getting a bit repetitive saying this but you will get no justification of Mugabe from me. My assertion is that the MDC is a party committed to the interests of white farmers and international capital.
Fine,
a majority of American voters voted for George Bush too, but this does not insulate Bush from my criticism and I see no reason why it should protect the MDC from critique either.
Jo and fine,
What is woeful about the link? Do you dispute that there are such connections or is it just too difficult for you to accept?
Jo, Which of my assertions about MDC platform do you dispute?
But even so you say that you’d probably vote for ZANU PF if you were a Zimbabwean.
Knowing and acknowledging the full horror of the man and the party he leads; mass murder, torture, extensive other human rights abuses, destroying his country’s economy, driving its people into starvation and economic refuge abroad and yet you still think he should have another chance to deliver more of the same.
Seriously weird.
Hi John Tracey!
Still at it, eh?
I realise the Kampuchea analogy is not a strong one; for a start, Kampuchea was completely lcosed off to outside observers. I wonder why?
But here is the summation of Madame In, a Cambodian matriarch, as the Pol clique fled the Vietnamese invasion in 1979 and their regime collapsed:
“Didn’t they win a glorious victory? But they wouldn’t treat people properly,so now they’ve lost everything. Band of cetins!”
(quoted by Philp Short in his biography of Pol Pot]
The day is coming, I hope, when Robert Mugabe will flee. The Hague beckons, as another poster wrote.
John Tracey,
Even if you are right (not conceded), surely being “…committed to the interests of white farmers and international capital” is somewhat better than being genocidal and a perpetrator of state terrorism and therefore a condidate for The Hague, rather than office.
Surely.
International trade union response:
http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/06/14/unions-call-for-action-to-stop-killings-torture-in-zimbabwe
And from African trade unions:
http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/13250/1/266/
John Tracey -
Ah I see were you’re coming from.
This is true. It continues to plague ex-colonies today. Effectively the policy was to create administrative areas containing tribal groups with traditional conflicts – divide and rule. After British imperialism withdrew the tendency was to leave the disasterous borders as is thus making it easier to, if not rule directly, then manipulate to advantage.
.
Therefore under democracy the problem becomes two or more ethnic entities at loggerheads and only one of them gets government a any one time. This leads to exploitation of all the other groups. Kenya’s having trouble with that one.
.
This is a constitutional problem, not a problem with democracy per se. Demos kratos – the people rule – is a basic principle. It’s possible to forsee different systems tailored by and for various local situations. A type of federalism or simple splitting states comes to mind. None of that changes the fact that Mugabe is a monster btw.
So essentially your fear is that Zimbabwe will swap a left wing demagogue with a right wing puppet of the Corporatocracy. Yes? That’s an interesting question and an illustration of just how nasty third world politics is. Often the choice is between a left-wing figure who is willing to stand up to multinational corporations and the like seeking to make outrageously exploitative deals with local elites. The downside is that such leaders have a tendency to demagoguery and economic illiteracy. One the other hand you have parties essentially willing to sell the life-blood of their land and people for peanuts on the basis of ‘advice’ from the World Bank.
.
In the middle of this is genuine liberal-democracy which tends to get shunned by either extreme of the spectrum and by the people who’re long tired of Western ideas. Middle-class people who’re the bedrock of solutions to these sorts of problems are often oppressed by both sides and tend to emigrate. FUBAR.
.
The Nestle boycotts were ill-conceived btw. Nestle is a polycentric corporation: the policies of various divisions are autonomously conceived or were. It’s therefore hard to alter the policies of Nestle in South America by punishing Nestle in Europe. Not impossible, just harder.
.
But John’s got better points then we’re giving him credit for. Unfortunately he’s buying into a dichotomous argument: A is bad hence B is good. But then so are we.
Adrien,
“So essentially your fear is that Zimbabwe will swap a left wing demagogue with a right wing puppet of the Corporatocracy. Yes?”
Yes.
But this is not because of the nature of Zimbabwe, Africa, tribalism, etc. It is because of the nature of multinational corporations and the British and U.S. states and the World Bank. My comments about the Rockefeller/Gates plan is not a hypothetical conspiracy but what is happening today in other African states more friendly/dependent on Multunational corporation and state aid.
Andrew Reynolds,
I believe the international prosecution of Mugabe will be as helpfull to Zimbabwe as the Hanging of Sadam was to Iraq.
If I was in control, I would have a truth and reconcilliation commission similar to South Africas whereby the truth of all the matters can be confronted by the victims and perpetrators in the context of national healing.
I would also include foreign interference in the electoral process amongst the terms of reference of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The comments which I have avoided, for I do not know enough of Z situation to sustain an argument, is the role of trade unions in the MDC raised by Andrew and Kim. A short ignorant response to this question is…look at the role of the C.I.A. in South and Cenral American nations in the 70s and 80s. The CIA was running trade union leadership courses in El. Salvador.
Consider also “Mr Kansteiner said the US was working with trade unions, pro-democracy groups and human rights organisations to bring about change.”
in the context of “The United States government has said it wants to see President Robert Mugabe removed from power and that it is working with the Zimbabwean opposition to bring about a change of administration.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/aug/22/zimbabwe.chrismcgreal
unions, just like governments can become the puppets of international capital. Just look at the Australian union movement regarding such things as mining and forestry.
However, the brutal excesses of Mugabi could well drive many a freedom loving person into the clutches of the MDC, especially since MDC have not at all campaigned on their platform but only on a critique of the Mugabi regime.
John -
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In my opinion there’s still two things wrong with your argument:
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1. The assumption that the MDC won’t be on the whole a better alternative despite its ties which are all in the past unless you want to illustrate the present situation.
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2. That the unethical activities of the Corporatacracy which is vile to be sure is worse than Mugabe’s tyranny and 200 000% inflation rate.
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What’s your alternative?
Adrien,
I am reluctant to answer your question because my opinion is wholly irrelevant to the situation, and I have no quick simple answer. But for what it is worth, the whole election agenda is meaningless, whether you look at it from the perspective of a rigged ritual of Mugabe or an U.S./U.K, backed destabilistion. Either way, I do not think it is sensible for anyone to expect the democratic illusion to bring about peace and prosperity. This can only occur through a power base outside of the state structure. At present the competing vested interests transcnding state power are the ZANU PF networks throughout Zimbabwe whose primary objective appears to be to maintain state power. The other transcendent vested interests is the profits of the agribusiness and mining investments in Zimbabwe. These two raw powers are slogging it out now and the people of Zimbabwe are just pawns in this etherial battle. It is people organisations themselves that hold the key to peace and prosperity. Unions not dominated by U.S. trained leaders but based on workplace democracy. Farmers co-ops to control local distribution and a single desk for selling cash and export crops as well as protection of a sovereign seed bank. Communal title to land with a democratic structure for the management of that land.
Nationalise all mining to keep the profits in Zimbabwe (which I suspect is probably Mugabe’s next step after nationalising the farms)
I guess I am a bit of a Ghandian and an anarchist on these matters. In India Ghandi organised masses of people into an agenda outside of capturing the state. They became economically self sufficient and boycotted the colonial economy. This, apart from developing the national economy, brought the state structure and its imperial masters to the table where sovereign Indian organisations did deals with power rather than as unwilling victims.
So, the grass roots unionists should team up with the grass roots farmers to form political and economic organisations to begine trade, foreign investment and export programs with investors who are willing to operate within the frameworks of the workers and farmers. (other than the local agents of agribusiness refered to as “white farmers”)
A government of national unity (or whatever the proposal is called) sounds a good idea as long it does not become a foreign dominated forum for MDC to globalise Zimbabwean soil. If it truly facilitated the plans of the workers and farmers and assisted sovreign negotions with foreign capital, not just that of the world bank gang.
For example an Australian trade union backed ethical investment scheme whereby Australian investors can invest in sustainable agriculture projects and mining projects where Zimbabweans have equity beyond national royalties. This sort of ethical investment scheme stands as a much better alternative to Bill Gates philanthropy. It builds independence, not dependence as the wold bank does. foreigners can profit from this scheme, but as partners not as landlords and bankers.
As for right now. The MDC supporters around the globe seem to ignore the significance of the drought on Zimbabwes productive capacity. The MDC program is to get farms producing cash crops for export trade so that Zimbabaweans can afford to buy food. This solution will take years after the initial decision to go that way.
Especially in light of the drought, Zimbabwe should engage in a mass permaculture program similar to Cuba’s whereby the shortest route between the soil and food in the mouth is taken. This solution can manifest within 3-12 months of the decision.
As has been pointed out by others, the Zimbabwean economy is well below stuffed. The MDC program promises big changes with trillions and trillions of dollars (U.S., not Zimbabwe $). Where is this money going to come from? What will be expected in return for it?
Zimbabwe govt. must become a puppet state to simply gain access to funds.
Any economic development strategy needs to be based on sovereign independence which means the soil being used primarily for the prosperity of Zimbabweans and its productivity being in the control of Zimbabweans.
Permaculture not G.M. crops. Self sufficiency before cash crops, agriculture controlled by farmers co-ops not agribusiness management, worksites controlled by workers including share equity.
Stuff like that is what I reckon, thats my alternative.
I reckon Ghandi would have voted ZANU PF too, but he would probably go on hunger strike until Mugabe stepped down as leader to be replaced by a new generation of nationalist leadership.
John, the trade union movement in Zimbabwe had a lot to do with the nationalist struggle, as did its counterpart in South Africa. The MDC emerged largely out of the union movement, after laudable concerns about the independence of civil society and the need to avoid a one party state were raised – when Mugabe flicked the switch to the latter with the rewrite of the constitution in 1987.
I simply don’t understand why you’re so ready to seize upon any interpretation – however implausible and ungrounded in the facts – which would exculpate ZANU-PF.
Mark,
any exculpation of ZANU PF that I have engaged in is purely in terms of understanding the sovereignty movement as a broad and diverse movement, not a small clique of Mugabe goons. Beyond that, where have I exculpated? I have called them state terrorists, said they are guilty of state repression and factional massacres and even called for a national hunger strike until Mugabe steps down.
But, again, I have largely restricted myself to a critique of MDC, not Mugabe.
What I simply don’t understand is why the MDC platform is accepted uncritically without any grounding in fact, a platform that would attract much critical comment on political fora if it was the platform of the Iraq or Afghanistan puppet governments, which it is.
If I have misrepresented the MDC platform, how so? To accuse my comments of being “implausible and ungrounded in the facts” I assume you have some more enlightened facts and analysis of what they are likeley to do in government? What do you believe is the MDC program for reconstruction?
What I find fascinating about this discussion is that some are unable to accept that UK. U.S. and multinational corparation agents are thouroughly engaged in the so called “civil society” movement and this election in particular. My link @ 87 is a U.K. Guardian article quoting a U.S. govt. spokesperson, not a Mugabe representative, clearly shows that the U.S. had a policy of national infiltration to oust the Mugabe government in 2002.
The MDC platform is very specific on such things as land reform, international investment and the path to reconstruction – all based on re-instituting white farmer property rights and connections to global agribusiness.
Yet, the bit that fascinates me, is my attempt to shine a light on the obvious seems to have universally ( as much as LP represents the universe) provoked a knee jerk response denouncing me as a spokesperson for Mugabe. What irrational process causes such denial of the obvious about MDC and deflection to boogie-man-ism? Could it be that those who accuse me have incorporated the murdoch line into their own self understandings, so deeply engrained that anything counter to that line is percieved as irrational or ungrounded? MDC is good MDC is good MDC is good MDC is good. MMMMMMMMMMMDC.
Somehow the suggestion that black people cannot grow food is not howled down, why not? Because it makes sense in terms of the Murdoch line. It IS the Murdoch line. Yet such racist assertion slips under the radar of those who have emotively promoted the MDC as the path to reconstruction, in most cases only informed by MDC media release and mainstream media commentary, in most cases in total ignorance of the MDC program.
Such sloppy political analysis would not be tolerated in a serious discussion of any other nation’s political crises. Why is it commonplace with regard to Zimbabwe, even on Australia’s most influential political blog?
If I am wrong, there must be some substantial argument to suggest my wrongness beyond cheap and emotive associations with Mugabi, Burma, Pol Pot, Hitler etc. or more updates on government attrocities.
If I am wrong, why? Why will an MDC domiated parliament be substantially different from the democratic parliaments of Iraq and Afghanistan? (That assumes an agreement that Iraq and Afghanistan have puppet governments, but perhaps I am wrong and they represent a new enlightenment).
John Tracey,
I see you as being wrong for many reasons – starting (but by no means finishing) with your priorities. You seem to be more tolerant of a person who is at least morally (and is also I believe legally, but we can leave that to a future court) guilty of murder, genocide, mass rape, state terrorism and is trying to engineer mass starvation than a person you believe is a tool of foreign capitalism. Even if I hated capitalism as much as you seem to I would think these priorities at least odd.
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On the “black people cannot grow food” line. The terminology was unfortunate, but I understood what he meant by the analysis he presented. I know that if I were removed from a city and dumped in the countryside with just a hoe and some seed grain I would certainly not grow enough to feed myself, never mind produce the sorts of surpluses that a person who actually had been properly trained in large scale agriculture could. What is there in that that you cannot understand?
No one should have been surprised that lots less food and other produce was produced.
There is much else I disagree with, but that is at least a start.
Tsvangirai has pulled out of the election.
Everybody: where to from here for Zimbabwe? Mr Mugabe President-by-default, facing a hostile Parliament. Will he need a coup to remove that irritant?
By my reckoning he didn’t just steal this election, it was armed robbery.
Where is the CIA when you need it? If anyone deserves the Allende treatment, it’s Mugabe.
(OK, it may not be necessary to kill him, but FFS just get rid of him.)
Spiros,
A quick flight to a certain Dutch city, perhaps – or would that be a rendition?
AR, that can come later.
There’s a lot of talk in the media today that an African solution is required. I think that is right. There is no stomach in the Western world for active intervention and probably no capacity for it either.
Mugabe is the Idi Amin of our times. The Tanzanians got rid of Amin quick smart in 1979 when they decided enough was e-bloody-nough. It’s up to South Africa to do the same to Mugabe, with or without assistance from other African nations. If they need a pretext, the flood of Zimbabwean refugees into South Africa should be sufficient. The sight of (mainly) white South African troops ejecting Mugabe may not be a good look for some, but IMO that would just be tough titties. Unfortunately there’s no sign that South Africa is even thinking about it, let alone will actually do it.
Cry the Beloved Country, indeed.
It just gets worse by the day, (as if that could be possible). Its beyond me to comment on it, I feel so helpless to help.
Spiros @ 98, spot on, mate!
Spiros,
I think that even the announcement by Soouth Africa that they were preparing to take this action would be enough. The kleptocracy he developed under him would see that they would have to get rid of him to try to hold on to the property they have stolen and perhaps their heads of freedom.
It is difficult to see how there will be a good outcome under any scenario from here.
Oops, hit submit a bit early. It should have read:
I think that even the announcement by South Africa that they were preparing to take this action would be enough to remove Mugabe. The kleptocracy he developed under him would see that they would have to get rid of him to try to hold on to the property they have stolen and perhaps their heads and/or freedom. Mugabe’s removal would be enough of an excuse for South Africa not to take any action – meaning the kleptocrats would be left in power for a while yet. They would probably be even less likely ot allow free and fair elections than Mugabe.
It is difficult to see how there will be a good outcome under any scenario from here.
Spiros wrote:
There’s a lot of ill-informed support for Mugabe within SA itself – even within ex-pats of Zimbabwe (a lot of the immigration has to do with finding work, not political oppression per-se). I’ve spoken to a number of people within SA over the years and was really surprised by this. I can’t explain why though and you’d have to talk to an awful lot of people to pin it down. There are elements of anti-colonialism in it, the idea that Mugabe once stood for something and still does in the minds of a lot of the locals. Also the idea that South Africa is still not confident enough in it’s own democratic tradition post-apartheid that intervening in Zimbabwe would create a huge SA domestic problem. It would have to be a multi-country intervention if it happened, and it won’t happen until you see a really horrifying episode of violence or genocide that shames the neighbouring countries into reaction. It’s terrible.
David,
I would agree. To me the only real hope here is that the SADC will get it together, force him out and then hold elections under their own auspices, possibly with UN help. I cannot see it happening though for the reasons you outline and simply that Mbeki is spineless on this – he sees thanking Mugabe for the help he gave decades ago as more important than the suffering of the Zimbabwean people.
More screwy priorities.
Andrew Reynolds wrote:
I think the most telling incident I witnessed was at Sun City a number of years ago. The bars aren’t segregated, but in one of the bars, the whites were around the TV screens showing the Super 14 rugby, and everyone else was (noisily) watching an African league soccer match which looked like it was much more fun. As it happened, I ended up watching the soccer match on the edge of the crowd. During a newsbreak, Mugabe appeared on the screen to hearty approval. Having become somewhat acquainted with a couple of blokes watching the soccer, they kindly explained to me that (for them) it was past being about anti-whiteness, and more about pro-african-ness (although that is an incredibly poor para-phrasing of what they said). I’m not sure it was 100% representative though, as most of the guys there were building contractors, plumbers, miners, “self made” men who I guess roughly correspond to the cashed up bogan phenom in Australia and were a long way from any kind of poverty. It’s a trite comparison, but I think Pauline Hanson is about as close as I can muster.
I am astounded at the calls for a foreign backed intervention. Did you learn nothing from Iraq?
Tsvangirai has avoided a civil war by his action and you bloodthirsty rabble are calling for a foreign intervention?
This is the first step towards a government of national unity brokered by S.A. and S.A.D.C. – allowing for the possibility of change by negotiation rather than election and within the frameworks of SADC, not England, U.S. or multinationals.
David,
Why do you think the zimbabwean supporters of Mugabi living in South Africa and the South Africans are ill informed? What is it that you know that they do not?
Geez, Louise. There are obvious ways for Mugabe to be removed short of armed intervention. And it’s very clear that the so-called unity government is a front for the continued domination of XANU-PF. Are you happy that there won’t be an election?
Do you think arresting, torturing and killing people is a good way of achieving what you regard as a desirable aim?
p.s. David,
I believe your bogans in the pub have a parallel in Australia with the Aboriginal sovereignty movement, they sound a lot more like that than Pauline Hanson. I suspect the support for white farmers would be more akin to Hansonism.
“I believe your bogans in the pub have a parallel in Australia with the Aboriginal sovereignty movement, they sound a lot more like that than Pauline Hanson. I suspect the support for white farmers would be more akin to Hansonism.”
That just shows you’re incapable of thinking beyond race.
John Tracey,
Some foreign interventions have worked in the past – under conditions that were remarkably similar to those in Zimbabwe.
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Thus far you have been full of suggestions to do nothing. What do you see as the appropriate action for anyone – or do you think that sitting around and watching will produce the appropriate outcome?
It is working well so far, I suppose.
John Tracey wrote:
It’s not a black/white issue even for them John (or at least that was my reading of it). I was more than welcome to join them watching the soccer (as were a couple of white SA guys who preferred it to the Rugby). I guess, thinking about it now, it’s more of an “when in trouble, stick with what you know” thing and a real element of national pride that is only starting to move on from “we won” to “we need to make it work”. It was a few years ago at any rate, and sentiment may have changed in that time, especially after this election.
John Tracey,
Apart from adopting the same MDC policies that you find unacceptable, is there any further act ZANU PF could commit that would prompt you to at least abstain from voting rather than casting a vote for them?
Kim,
“And it’s very clear that the so-called unity government is a front for the continued domination of XANU-PF.”
please explain. As I understand it this is the prefered option of SADC. Why do you dismiss it?
Let me ask you a question. Do you think the civil war that would erupt with an MDC government is a civil war that the economy has to have? Is the principle of democracy worth this? Or, as seems to be the SADC position, is peace a precondition to democracy? A transitional government of national unity would provide such a peace to, with SADC support, get both democracy and the economy back on track.
In response to your question re torture and killing….No. What have i said to indicate this?
and, I am not happy that there is not to be an election and I would not be happy if there was. Please read my comments on extra-parliamentary power above to explain further.
The simple fact is Africans see things differently to the LP status-quo. All sorts of rationalisations can be generated such as Mbeke is spineless or Africanists in the pub are just Hansonite bogans. But the truth is the African perspective and the African solutions do not conform to the sort of foreign intervention strategies that are being called for here.
And yes, there are all sorts of ways to oust Mugabe other than armed intervention, and they are all in place now in the form of escalating sanctions but in particular the maintenance of Zimbabwe’s foreign dept – the stick. The carrot is the debt will be dropped as in other African countries when Mugabe is gone, no doubt a significant factor in MDC’s support.
But like Iraq, sanctions can only go so far and when you get recalcitrants such as Sadam and comrade Robert who are clearly willing to allow their populations to bear the suffering of such sanctions, sanctions are meaningless without the capacity to escalate to military intervention.
I say negotiation brokered by SADC towards a transitonal government of national unity is a far superior option than the stock imperialist mode of foreign intervention.
Essentially, John, your position suggests that democracy should not prevail because Mugabe’s supporters threaten a civil war – which is just an extension of the violent tactics which have so far prevented democracy from prevailing. End of story.
John Tracey,
If you believe (correctly IMHO) that Mugabe is “…clearly willing to allow [his] population … to bear … suffering…” why do you think that negotiaations are likely to bear fruit? All of the quiet SADC diplomacy so far has not had much of an effect.
In any case, when he either dies (he is 84) or is forced out of / yields power why do you expect that is would mean that our friend, the “Black Jesus” or one of his mates will not just assume power and continue on as before?
FDB
“That just shows you’re incapable of thinking beyond race.”
Anyone who tries to understand Africa’s history and economy, in particular Zimbabwe and South Africa’s without an understanding of race is silly.
But you are right, it is not about race it is about foreign capital and economic domination.
Avocadia,
That would depend on local candidates and local policies in the community that I hypothetically live in. If the regime attacked my hypothetical community I would not vote for them. But at present they have given my hypothetical uncle 1000 acres, where I and many others hypothetically live, and have hijacked food aid destined for MDC communities and distributed it in our hypothetical community, which I feel terrible about but I gratefully accept it because there is little other food than what can be grown on uncle’s farm, which isn’t much in a drought. The local MDC candidate says my hypothetical uncle has to give the farm back to the old white farmer who used to live there and we all have to work for him. Uncle says he lost a lot of comrades in the war to get that land and he is not going to give it back without a fight, and a lot of the younger people say they will back him up so I am scared what might happen in my hypothetical community if MDC win the election.
Andrew,
a/ “Some foreign interventions have worked in the past – under conditions that were remarkably similar to those in Zimbabwe.”
Can you give an example?
But in answer to your question, negotiations with allies and partners will always bear more fruit than confrontations between hostile opponents.
You cannot expect SADC to have any impact during an election, especially such a divisive one. They can do nothing until there is some stability in government to negotiate with which given the MDC dominance of parliament and Mugabe as president, can only come through a government of national unity. Until that time comes there is nothing even SADC can do except trying to assist such a process to begin. The only other alternative, so gleefully endorsed by commentators here, is war.
Been reading lots of zimblogs & newspapers. All of John Tracey’s stuff you can read on the front pages of the state approved newspapers. And his stuff about this special African way to seeing things – spare us anymore of your insights John. Pleeze.
This is more of what I’ve been reading:
Like the Mugabe Govt, you seem entirely incapable of telling the truth John, so I’ve pulled out the MOST contentious parts of the MDC Land policies.
YES. The MDC policies ARE all about re-instituting property law and tenure over land and paraphrasing ‘finally sorting out the mess from both the colonial and now socialist periods’.
I know this is exactly the type of straight-up-the-line anti-socialist platform that is an anathema to you John, but least argue the policies themselves, not your constant hysterical misrepresentations of them.
I will also go and find the data which shows just how FEW people were re-settled in the post-2000 land reclaimations by the regime, and instead how many more officials and ZANU hangers-on have grabbed big parcels of land which they are now not farming. But don’t let facts get in the way of ZANU propaganda.
John Tracey,
looks like you got PART of what you wanted: no votes will be cast for the MDC Presidential candidate. Happy?
jo,
I have not touched on the land issue – but it may be helpful to add in that the UK government offered years ago to fund the buy out and redistribution of farmland. Mugabe did not take up the offer as the UK insisted that the process be open and transparent.
Andrew, if you know something about land reform it would be interesting to hear an informed perspective.
Jo,
The fine platitudes of the parts of the policy you have presented must be understood in several contexts contexts.
1/ The free market mode of land redistribution – giving it only to those who can prove they can make a profit, was the policy of Mugabe from 1980 until 1996 and delivered very little. It was the failure of this model that lead to the more radical land aquisition programs.
and 2/ The only real specifics of the land program are a/ the re-establishment of white farmer property rights b/ the creation of a commission that will look into the matter, and once it has looked, distribute land not already claimed by white farmers to people who can produce a profit and c/ abolish communal title to land and incorporate it into the private market framework.
What you have not included is their agricultural program which includes…..
“To achieve this objective the MDC is determined to bring social justice and economic stability to the country by implementing a just, orderly and equitable land-settlement programme,
facilitating the transformation of smallholder (communal) agriculture, and initiating
a ‘people-centred’ agrarian-reform programme to ensure security of tenure, social
recovery and the economic well-being of all Zimbabweans”.
fair enough so far, but…..
“The MDC’s vision is underpinned by innovation and technological change, the
revitalization of national agricultural institutions, the provision of investment
incentives, and the creation of an enabling regulatory framework. The MDC
also fully recognizes that the success of agriculture depends crucially on macro-
economic stability, strong agro-industrial linkages, and the structural transformation
of the economy.”
and that is where the world bank and Rockefeller come in whereby farmers land can be mortgaged to borrow money to reconstruct in GM crop programs for the global market – rather than just putting seed in the ground.
“The MDC’s economic policies are designed to overcome the dualism in the Zimbabwean economy by cutting the links and mechanisms through which the low-productivity non-formal sectors are reproduced.”
This is a policy to abolish subsistance farming because it is economically unviable.
“Food Security
It will be an urgent and immediate priority of the MDC government to restore food
production to levels that are able to provide Zimbabwe’s basic needs. To achieve
this, the initial requirement for food imports will be reorganized so as to direct these
essential imports to local food-processing companies, who will pay the full import
price for all such imports, irrespective of their origin.
Those communities that do not have the resources to buy food at full market cost
will be given opportunities to earn the required resources through development
programmes in rural areas.”
Why does the MDC not want people to grow their own food on their own land?
And Jo, this link I gave earlier on the U.S. policy to intervene and overthrow Mugabe in 2002 is U.S. govt. propaganda, not Zanu PF propaganda. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/aug/22/zimbabwe.chrismcgreal
p.s.
MDC policy…..
“The Grain Marketing Board will remain a part of central government but will be
required to operate on commercial principles and will no longer hold a statutory
monopoly over grain and oilseed marketing.”
How will this help farmers other than big agribusiness?
“Seed Production
Realizing that the quality of a crop depends mainly on the quality of the seed, the
MDC government will ensure private-sector-driven seed production through out-
grower contracting alliances between seed-production companies and large and
small-scale commercial farmers.”
Rockefeller/Gates!
Why cant zimbabwe produce its own seed from its own fertile crops rather than be dependent on foreign supliers?
Consider also MDC’s commitment to AGOA (U.S. legislation)
“AGOA provides reforming African countries with the most liberal access to the U.S. market available to any country or region with which the United States does not have a Free Trade Agreement. It supports U.S. business by encouraging reform of Africa’s economic and commercial regimes, which will build stronger markets and more effective partners for U.S. firms.”
http://www.agoa.gov/agoa_legislation/agoa_legislation.html
John Tracey -
I sympathize with your position and share, say, your political aesthetics. But I’m a jaded creature.
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It seems to me that you’ve outlined quite well the problem. There’s a struggle between ex-aristo capital and a Revolutionary Fubaria. There are tribal arrangements. You put your hope in a syndacilist type solution. The trouble is, as things stand, it seems very difficult to organize grass roots resistance peacefully. So it would be doomed to Maoism and all the contradictions of revolutionary violence.
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When arguing with friends from non-democratic countries I always say: the point of the liberal-democratic system isn’t to bring about People Power, change or Utopia. It’s to create a stable political entity that’s capable of changing the government without violence and makes that government answerable to the people at least on the general situation if not the particulars.
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The effect of this is the State is then limited in what they can do to the citizenry or ask from them.
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Even this is not an ideal that the so-called democracies can claim real very often. But non-violent, separated, limits on power is what they achieve more or less. That’s difficult enough and after that it takes generations before the culture even begins to acquire the ethics implied by the system.
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Therefore it seems to me that hope in trade unions might be dashed alongside other resorts of the need to support the good guys. Of course how one achieves liberal-democracy in the tribally divided situation you’ve described is something I don’t have the answer to either.
A less sensationalist history of land reform giving an interesting insight into the political landscape of ZANU PF, an interview in 2001 by Sam Mayo
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/AllDocsByUNID/7be3daffdf95ec9085256aa900671945
He also has an interesting lengthy analysis which is a PDF and I cant work out how to link it but you can find it by googling…..
Land Policy, Poverty Reduction and Public Action in Zimbabwe
Sam Moyo
It delivered to the Zimbabwean people food security. They had enough to eat. They did not starve in great numbers as they are now doing. What problem do you have with the concept of a profit? It just means that a business can produce a surplus for sale. Do you think, as apparently you do, that the only businesses that should exist are those that run at a loss? Who is going to bail them out? This is idiocy and I am sad that millions of Zimbabweans are suffering from this idiotic thinking.
It will stop the theives from ZANU PF, with whom you associate yourself, from stealing the profits of their labour from them.
Because, although you apparently haven’t noticed this, and this can only be wilful ignorance on your part, such is the starvation in Zimbabwe through Mugabe’s criminal policies, that they are eating their seed-stock (although being as completely ignorant of agriculture as you are you won’t know what seed-stock is).
And your problem with Rockefeller/Gates? Nothing I have read about the Gates Foundation suggests that it has any interest in agricultural seeed-stock. As best I undrstand it its focus is just on eradicating the scourges of AIDS, malaria and TB. Scourghes that run rampant in Zimbabwe under Mugabe.
Also I am curious as to why you adopt the affectation of spelling Mugabe’s name as Mugabi. That’s not the way he spells it. What precious point are you trying to make?
“The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s richest charity, joined with the Rockefeller Foundation yesterday to launch a new development initiative for sub-Saharan Africa that they said would revolutionize food production and reduce hunger and poverty for tens of millions of people.”
“The Africa program will begin with a relatively small Gates contribution of $100 million over five years, plus $50 million from Rockefeller, to fund development of more robust disease- and drought-resistant seeds for primary African foodstuffs, enhanced distribution networks for seed and fertilizer, and university-level training for African crop scientists.”
” The Rockefeller Foundation, which started shifting the bulk of its development funding from Asia and Latin America to Africa several years ago, recently shut down its program in Zimbabwe because of political strife there.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/12/AR2006091201384.html
Critique of green revolution from the Institute for Food and Development policy (Food First)
Lessons from the Green Revolution http://www.foodfirst.org/node/230
“In the final analysis, if the history of the Green Revolution has taught
us one thing, it is that increased food production can-and often does-go
hand in hand with greater hunger.”
and
“The Gates-Rockefeller Green Revolution for Africa: Still ignoring the root causes of hunger?” http://www.foodfirst.org/node/1506
” The Rockefeller Foundation’s notion that small rural shopkeepers will provide farmers with the agronomic technical assistance needed to maintain soil fertility is ludicrous. At best, they will do what they have always done: assist a handful of foreign companies to increase sales of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Given the end of cheap oil, and the inevitable explosion of fertilizer costs, what kind of future does the Green Revolution really offer to poor farmers?
John Tracey wrote:
- it isn’t just about fertiliser. It’s knowledge, economics, genetics, husbandry skills, reasonable automation (or generating rural jobs that have disappeared).
Should they sit on their hands as part of some moral/ideological principle and starve to death? Who gives a rats whether money changes hands for the stuff of life, you still have to farm it which is a great honourable occupation. Feeding people, it’s the new morality. It’s something that Mugabe never understood – people like to work, but they can’t be afraid or they just won’t go. Trying to give a few agricultural companies the same level of moral repugnance as Mugabe is the dumbest thing I’ve read today.
David,
I didn’t say that, the Institute for Food and Devekopment policy did. If you read the link that goes with that quote you will find a more sophisticated analysis than the caracature you have drawn.
John Tracey,
amongst much else you opined: “It was the failure of this model that lead to the more radical land aquisition programs.”
Well, I wouldn’t call it a “program” as such. That seems to imply an overall plan. As GregM and others have pointed out, successful farming requires knowledge & skills, fertiliser and seeds, etc. Machinery helps too. The guys who marched onto farms seem not to have had those skills. The black farm workers who had worked on those farms and had PLENTY of skills were evicted too, were they not? So some thug-blacks evicted some skilled-blacks. Where was the sense or the justice in that?
Call that a policy?
“Land acquisition”, eh? No doubt Harry the Hold-up Man in Hobart will be entertained to know that next time he’s in a Court he need only say, “Your Honour, I was just carrying out my Cash Acquisition Policy when I entered the Bank. I’m a War Veteran, by the way.” If Her Honour sends Harry to Harare to join the other “War Veterans”, that’ll be punishment enough I reckon.
Sorry, John. WARNING: your writings may engender foolish responses, in keeping with their own character.
John Tracey wrote:
Hardly – the link points to a bunch of fantasists who seem to think that a fairy tale of small land holdings will feed Zimbabwe’s millions. Frankly, this is a crock. Large populations require scale. Large scale agriculture has ecological impacts, you can’t avoid it, but the alternatives were all too clear to people prior to 1945 – India used to regularly experience famine and that has greatly diminished. That the African experience has been different has far more to do with ruinous governments, revolutions, wars and corruption than it has to do with Rockefeller and Monsanto. Neither of those companies are exactly shining beacons, but they are a shitload better than getting beaten and starving.
David,
You and I do not always see eye to eye – but that comment is a beauty. Full marks.
David, and it’s not just about subsistence farming and the baseline ability to feed the Zimbabwean population – Zimbabwe enjoyed living standards enviable by comparison to other African nations because the agricultural surplus was traded on the world (capitalist) market.
Yes Mark,
Not only under efficient agriculture does the farmer feed her family, she also feeds the neighbours, and in addition the nation may have a surplus to export (WITHOUT starving the population).
Another sad instance was that before civil war and Pol Pot, Cambodia was a net exporter of food.
GDP and export do not necessarily correspond with increased living standards of the population. e.g. Australia has a mining boom and steady growth yet the underclasses and working poor are rapidly expanding.
Zimbabwe agriculture does not trade surplus, it grow crops for export, export is the primary function of the bulk of the commercial agricultural sector which was, until recently, in the hands of a very small elite of white farmers. The bulk of the population’s domestic agriculture was/is grown on communal title where everyone evicted by the colonial farmers are forced to live in less productive areas to struggle with subsistance farming, which forms the massive informal economy that MDC want to eliminate.
Zimbabwean poverty didn’t start with the new wave of land reform. While multinational agribusiness has been maintaining steady profits up until recently, the reality in the communal areas was extreme poverty and those lucky enough to have a job were paid poor wages by the corporations.
The poverty caused by the original disposession from land in the British colonial era has been entrenched and still has not been remedied. This is the reason for the contemporary poverty.
I have no problem with capitalism. A level playing field sounds like a very good idea but I have never yet seen one. The corporate domination of third world economies backed uo by state sanctions and military interventions is a phenomenon a bit more complicated than simple capitalism.
You seem to me to be indulging in terminological quibbling, John.
Yet you insinuate that the social force actually fighting for equitable wages, the trade union movement, is some sort of American front?
Perhaps you’d care to explain why poverty has now greatly increased, and while you’re at it, why subsistence farming is necessarily a preferable lifestyle to urban ones? And try to do so without invoking “imperialism” as if it’s a reductive cause. Obviously imperialism can be a cause of poverty, but you don’t seem to me to be able to explain why poverty persisted during Mugabe’s rule and is now at such dire levels.
Logically, as well, “poverty” is a comparative measure and only has any force by way of comparison, unless we’re talking absolute poverty where life cannot be easily sustained. Ask yourself if there was “poverty” before “the original dispossession of land”. If so, by what yardstick is it measured?
I’m surprised you can’t see that there’s both enormous simplification and a huge distortion of logic in that throwaway comment, which appears to be sloganeering rather than analysis.
The country’s colonial history is a fact. It can’t be undone. What needs to be discussed is what steps were and weren’t taken after indepedence to improve living standards.
p.s.
“Zimbabwe enjoyed living standards enviable by comparison to other African nations”
This is a remarkable comment since Africa has experienced severe drought and the collapse of the first green revolution in the last few decades resulting in famines and mass poverty.
If this is a standard by which to judge the Zimbabwe economy it is a very low standard indeed.
Ambigulous,
you are very wrong. Under “efficient agriculture” you will be paid dollars to grow canola or maize or tobacco or sugar. You will of course be free to share your pay packet with your neighbors. You will have nothing to export, only your boss can do that because only HE has the seed and distribution contract with Monsanto or Phillip Morris.
“The country’s colonial history is a fact. It can’t be undone.”
Why not? Why must white domination of land be a given in the reconstruction of Zimbabwe?
Zimbabwe will never escape mass poverty untill the history is undone, same as Aboriginal Australia.
You’re not making any sense at all, John. I’m referring to the 1980s and early 1990s. Are you suggesting that somehow your version of land reform would usher in some sort of paradise where incomes were akin to those in developed nations? Or that this panacea would have occurred under Mugabe if only evil imperialism hadn’t intervened? Both seem to me to be risible arguments. If not, what are you saying? I can’t make it out at all.
John Tracey,
I don’t think the critics of Mugabe on this thread suggested that there was no poverty before the farm seizures; far from it. But in my view the extent of starvation has increased enormously since then. It’s apparently not primarily due to drought. So how come the new “policies” have been unsuccessful? By your lights, the seized farms should now be operating under an African idyll of subsistence, and wholesome communal effort. Kids laughing and playing, parents liberated from the depredations of international finance & white farmers & the CIA. Crops and food aplenty. Surplus grain held over for seed. More fertiliser than you could poke a sjamboek at. Wonderful.
Simple question: why are so many Zimbabweans undernourished in 2008? (Of course I don’t mean the ZANU-PF leadership, who somehow seem to be scraping by on their short, patriotic rations.)
Huh?
You’re in fantasy land, my friend. It is obvious that the effects of colonialism can’t be wished away. They are continuing effects. The cause is gone. What has to be dealt with are the effects (and those effects are not reducible to one cause).
That’s even before getting to the analogy with Indigenous Australia, which is nowhere near as forceful as you seem to think. But I can’t understand most of what you’re saying, and I’ve got other things to do this afternoon.
Note also that you’ve distorted my argument – I am not saying that “white domination of land [must] be a given” – that’s quite disingenuous and doesn’t make me want to engage further with you.
No Mark, the developed nations standard of living is obscene and the root cause of African poverty.
Are you aware of any drought and poverty in Africa in the 80s and 90s? Does the name Bob Geldorf ring a bell?
And yes, it was pressure from the British to institutionalise white land rights in Zimbabwe as a condition of independence. Mugabe pursued an essentially neo-liberal agenda (read the Moyo links) which was the inherent flaw of the revolutionary government, re-entrenching Zimbabwe into existing global trade structures by way of a white elite who controlled the lot.
Land reform for all Zimbabweans based on sustainable agriculture and a capacity for 1/subsistance farming 2/ Market gardening and 3/ contracting with Agribusiness, may not reach a standard of living of that developed world might call paradise but it will be enough for prosperity as a best case scenario and survival as a worst case.
“Does the name Bob Geldorf ring a bell?”
Nort really.
Mark, what did you mean then? What are the historical givens that you refer to? Forgive me if I misunderstand you, perhaps if you put a position in a little more detail than throw away one-liners I might understand better.
Incidently,
Zimbabwe still has to pay its foreign debt. All the debt relief that Saint Bob pleaded for in his concerts ended up being a hammer to hit Africa with. Debt was dropped for those countries who signed up to the England and U.S. agendas, not just in terms of agricultural reform. England made support for the coalition of the willing to Invade Iraq as a precondition to dropping debt in some African countries to boost the list of international support for the Iraq invasion.
The world bank is as much a cause of Zimbabwe’s poverty as Mugabe’s economic management is, or have we conveniently forgotton those aspects of global economy that informed discussion of Africa in the 80s and 90s?
LOL – John Tracey. “Bob Geldof” does ring a bell. He was the guy trying to help out at the scene of another African government induced famine. Perfect example. Throughout the entire Eritrea famine the government in Addis was exporting food. The government was deliberately trying to starve the population of the (then) rebellious province into submission.
Thanks, John. Your challenge for 20 points – find a famine in the last 100 years that was not government induced or supported. Just one. Any one. My contention is that it is never “the market” or free enterprise that starves the people – it is the corrupt, self-seeking behaviour of despots. Come on – one single, solitary, example.
John Tracey,
One the debt question – (rhetorical question alert) – Who incurred the debt? Who borrowed the money in the knowledge it had to be paid back and then wasted it on arms and other things that did not help the country? Surely it was not Robert Mugabe KCB?
Bob Geldof, that soap shy feller who was bleating that we gotta do “something” for Ethiopians, whilst concurrently Ethiopia was being paid twice the price for live sheep exports to Saudi Arabia as were Australian farmers, because Ethiopia was producing a superior product.
Yea, I remembered him then, & I remember him now. He’d do the world a favour if when swimming he’d go down three times & come up twice.
When it actually got to Zimbabwean farmers, world bank funding was a tremendous shot in the arm. Improved production & efficiency and provided much more fertiliser and seed for the black farm workers to nick from the white farmers.
Inputs for homeland subsistence farming largely were pilferings from white farms by black workers from those farms.
When the white farmers and their black workers were ethnically cleansed from the farmlands by urban thugs, it sorta made it difficult for the subsistence farmers, with no source of inputs.
ARRRR Geldof, its just my accent.
Andrew,
Although drought is a recurring factor, I do not believe there would be a single famine that was not the result of government policy. The key question is what informs government policy, what pressures and interests does it take into account when it makes it’s disaterous decicions?
And in particular, what approach to the market does that government take. In Mugabe’s case he engaged in the global market in line with English and World Bank support and allowed multinational agribusiness and mining to dominate the economy. The hunger in Zimbabwe today is because of the collapse of agribusiness and the massive unemployment caused by it. Most rural Zimbabweans (and most Zimbabweans are rural) are dependent on wages from relatives working in the towns.
Zimbabwe is hungary because the communal lands are over crowded and poor farming land. This majority reality is a seperate economy altogether from the GDP and the account books of the white farmers.
Even if the white farmers return and the corporations profits bloom again, the reality for most Zimbabweans on the communal lands is subsistance farming in 5 year drought cycles and being dependent on relatives with jobs to support them.
It is the political decision, in the first instance by the white colonial government and then by Mugabe to use the most fertile land exclusively for foreign investment and allow the bulk of the population to scratch scraps from the communal lands to survive.
This is the structural cause of the poverty and it is indeed a matter of government policy.
John Tracey,
So you agree that any starvation is the result of government policy. So the hunger in Zim today has a single root cause – Mugabe and ZANU PF policy, as you do all but say in the comment above.
.
OK – you say “…the reality for most Zimbabweans on the communal lands is subsistance farming in 5 year drought cycles…” yet you support the idea that puts people back into subsistence farming? Why on earth would you choose to starve the people of Zimbabwe? What do you have against them?
Surely the long term solution (based on the comment above) for Zim is to promote large scale farming (whether by appropriately experienced and educated blacks or whites), strong education for all Zimbabweans and then free trade to allow them to import and export what they can?
“Zimbabwe is hungary”
Finally, the unifying Tracey theorem emerges:
“Let them eat goulash!”
FDB: I think he means its ripe for Soviet invasion to restore socialism.
But the Soviets don’t like small-scale subsistence farming do they? Reeks of kulaks – shoot them all. Bring in tractors, big machines, collectivise everything – what, famines you say? Shoot some more: saboteurs!! Hungarian aristocrat Fascist hordes plot sabotage anti-Soviet wreckers ….. hmmm starting to sound like Mugabe.
I would have hoped that my critique of multinational domination of the third world would meet some contrary argument a bit more substantial than jokes about my poor spelling.
This passionate defense of new world order economics is even less intelligent than Mark’s unexplained assertiion that colonial history cant be undone.
I can understand people’s personal need to publically condemn Mugabe, but from what I see, Mugabe hasn’t got to long to go. The key issue for Zimbabwe is not even Mugabe’s mistakes post-independence. The real issue is what is going to happen now.
I simply cannot comprehend why the neo-liberal model of corporate dominance has been so enthusiastically and uncritically embraced on a blog which claims to be left of centre.
Even the free marketeers at Catalaxy have a more enlightened attitude to multinational/state manipulation of the economy than the punters on this thread.
I can understand why those who believe black people cant farm or that Zimbabwe was better off under minority white rule may object to my position but the blanket dismissal of my opinion, apparently informed by nothing except MSM headlines, by those who who claim some leftist perspective is stunning.
Kim’s post on David Burchell contains some scathing critique of the Murdoch press’s packaging of Australian politics, yet for some reason the Murdoch press, the vanguard of England’s recent crusade to protect foreign investment in Zimbabwe, is the determinant of truth in understanding Zimbabwe politics and escapes any analysis or deconstruction whatsoever here, except by me who has been ridiculed for it.
“I can understand why those who believe black people cant farm or that Zimbabwe was better off under minority white rule may object to my position…”
John Tracey (alias PR organ of ZanuPF) after revolutionary success, and almost 30 years of majority rule, Zimbabwe indisputably was better off under white minority rule.
John,
Have a good think about your #152 again and you may understand why your argument makes so little sense to me, at least. The hunger is not the consequence of “multinational domination of the third world” (as you seem to be trying to paint it in #157) as you seem to believe it is – it is the consequence of the theft by, and misguided (at best) policies of, the Mugabe government. Whether you think that multinationals should be nailed up to a cross for their many and manifold sins or not, nothing is going to change the simple reasons for the complete and utter failure of Mugabe as a leader of his people. Whether you sit on the left, right or centre the only position (IMHO) you can take that cannot see that is one of simple, willful blindness.
John Tracey wrote:
It’s quite possible to be “left of centre” without being an anti-globalisation knee-jerker. The vast majority of farms in Australia are privately owned or in the hands of corporations, with far worse soil and rainfall profiles than Zimbabwe, yet we export copious amounts of excess production which we swap for other stuff. The “left” part still works when you consider that we continue to have good governance, welfare safety nets, the rule of law, strong public education, universal health care. All of those things are expensive and require a vibrant private sector to finance and a settled and productive population. Zimbabwe could have had plenty of them, but chose redistribution of land rather than taxation of production. It failed.
Being “left of centre” isn’t demonising multi-nationals unless they deserve it (Union Carbide for example). Being “left of centre” isn’t just a reactive prescription to be “not right wing in anything” either. It’s the freedom to pick the solutions you think will work from a broad palette, to argue it rationally, to implement it knowing that social justice isn’t always delivered via a government cheque (but can be sometimes). It’s not 1965 anymore John, no matter what Noam Chomsky says.
David Rubie: “Being “left of centre” isn’t demonising multi-nationals… Being “left of centre” isn’t just a reactive prescription to be “not right wing in anything” either…
[Being "left of centre" is] the freedom to pick the solutions you think will work from a broad palette, to argue it rationally, to implement it knowing that social justice isn’t always delivered via a government cheque…”
Nah, you had it right the first time. What you describe in your second proposition is just being a sane reasonable person. (with the exception of the pirate’s-parrot bit about ’social justice’ –squawk!– whatever the hell *that* might mean. Hey, maybe we could ask… Mugabe!)
But judging by what we see from experience in everyday life, being definitionally “left” does indeed structurally involve subscribing to some or all of the bizarre hatreds and reactivity you enumerate in your first salvo (and plus a whole lot more), even though the “left” is occasionally, well, right.
John Tracey: “but the blanket dismissal of my opinion, apparently informed by nothing except MSM headlines, by those who who claim some leftist perspective is stunning.”
As far as I can see, many of us have argued particular points with you. Points such as: the need for a farming workforce to be well-trained and skilled; the contrast between Zimbabwe’s woeful conditions (starvation anyone?) and the relatively more prosperous conditions in neighbouring African nations; the efficiency of Australian farms; the ethics and intentions of multinational companies; the intentions of the Gates Foundation; the mechanics of international trade, etc.
I wouldn’t call this “blanket dismissal” by individual posters; however taken as a whole, your views have been critricised on many counts. That’s what happens on blogs. We discuss, we opine, we differ, we agree.
We don’t send thugs around to beat or murder our opponents. We just talk. For me, that’s why I support democratic principles. And that’s another reason Robert Mugabe is anathema. Oh, and the fact that many of his people are malnourished – that has to count against him too.
He has failed as a “leader” and for the sake of the future of Zimbabwe, it’s important to discuss “where to from here?” Part of that I think has to include an attempt at pinpointing exactly HOW and WHY Mugabe has taken Zimbabwe down to the depths. Your prescriptions for the future seem to me to be very unlikely to bring Zimbabwe back to prosperity in a reasonable time frame, John.
Ambigulous,
As far as I can see people have expressed their disagreement with me but failed to explain this disagreement beyond peer conformity, ridicule and accusations that I support rape torture and murder because I dare critique the MDC. This is not discussion, it is hysterical denialism.
The simple fact is that Zimbabwean poverty is a construction of Cecil Rhodes and the South Africa Company who designed and created the present Zimbabwe economy including land use. It doesn’t matter if it is Mugabe or Tsvangirai who is the puppet for agribusiness and mining interests. As long as the economy and fertile land remains under minority white control the pretty trimmings of democratic process cannot remedy Zimbabwes structural poverty.
To barrack for the MDC as if it were a football team rather than a political organisation representing particular interests is just shallow reductionist media consumerism. Gossip masquerading as political analysis.
And as a deliberate act of exculpation, while it is absoluteley correct to blame Mugabe for corrupt and brutal courts, police, prison and military, the eviction of white farmers was not Mugabe’s initiative. He resisted such land reform for nearly 20 years. It was not until the war veterens launched a new insurgency, began occupying farms and threatened war against Mugabe, that Mugabe finally got around to passing the legislation to legitimise the insurrectionary farm occupations.
Mugabe is the meat in the sandwich between revolutionary nationalists on the brink of war and international capital and it is this very predicament that causes Mugabe to be both brutal and contradictory in his management of state affairs, much like Sadam’s reign in Iraq. The democratic choice between tweedle dee and tweedle dum will no more bring peace to Zimbabwe than it did to Iraq.
“The democratic choice between tweedle dee and tweedle dum will no more bring peace to Zimbabwe than it did to Iraq.”
Wait.
So here we have an ACTUAL example of a lefty who really thinks Saddam should have remnained in power. Is that what you’re saying? That in the oh-so-helpful counterfactual where you’re an Iraqi voter, you would have wanted Saddam to stick around, because the opposition might have been Western stooges?
FFS, while I disagree with much of what John Tracey has written, he’s really got a point about the misrepresentation of his position, the contribution from FDB being but the latest example.
He has also conducted his part of the discussion with remarkable civility in the face of derision and outright hostility from some who seem unable to cope with an a point of view radically different from their own.
Sorry for upsetting your sensibilities Adrian, but have I misrepresented John really?
Equating the murderous tyrant he is oh-so-nearly-but-not-quite defending with Saddam is meant to prove what exactly? When someone makes such an equation, it is presumably meant to mean something. If not my alleged misrepresentation, then what?
I don’t want to scare anyone away, and don’t think I’ve been particularly harsh – annoying jokes about spelling mistakes aside, I’ve tried to understand and found myself genuinely baffled by his position.
It just doesn’t seem like a reasonable one, which is at odds completely with JT’s demeanour – I agree for the record that he has behaved very well. If I have offended you John, I apologise.
For clarity’s sake, the crux of my problem with the Saddam analogy is that no credible opposition existed, due to ongoing and relentless bludgeoning of anyone who looked like becoming one. Which is exactly what’s happening in Zimbabwe, and which in turn makes JT’s analogy look like yet another own goal.
Another huge difference of course is Iraq’s (former) economic viability, which makes support for Saddam’s continued rule (for me at least) far more justifyiable in humanitarian terms. Of course, that would be comparing one’s turds after eating apples with those from a diet of oranges. I’m sure we’d all prefer some goulash.
FDB, Let me dissolve any ambiguity on my position on Iraq. It would have been better to leave Sadam in power than what there is now. One million dead Iraqis would still be alive.
Well let me say that on that score I agree with you at least. The only worse way of getting rid of him than what’s been done would have been nuking the whole place.
That is however a false dichotomy, as is that between letting Zanu PF keep on
runningruining Zimbabwe versus “another Iraq”.Fair enough FDB.
I thought the point that he was making re Iraq was that the problems had a similar genisis, and that similar solutions would be bound to fail.
I honestly don’t know enough about the history of Zimbabwe to comment on the veracity of the point, but I thought that it at least deserved some serious consideration.
And BTW I don’t think that you have been offensive. I was thinking of others who are a bit to keen to throw around words such ‘wilful ignorance’ etc.
JT is largely correct about Mugabe.
He is largely incorrect about Saddam if he is asserting that Saddam found himself to be the victim of circumstance. Saddam had an evil, but sustainable, status in the region until he invaded Kuwait. Saddam was the author of his own demise.
However, JT is correct to point out that Mugabe and Saddam both had a sizeable clientage in their countries. Mugabe’s is probably wider than Saddam’s. This fact makes it difficult for outsiders to intervene to enact regime change and successful post-invasion reconstruction.
I doubt that there is a country, or a coalition of countries, that is prepared to make the sacrifice necessary to impose reconstruction upon Zimbabwe.
Thus, to call for direct foreign intervention is idle.
If only Zimbabwe had lots of oil…
It is probably possible, however, for outsiders to encourage splits within Mugabe’s clientage. The trick is to reward disloyalty to Mugabe, not to punish loyalty.
My apologies, 100,000 Iraqis
I heard a million figure somewhere but that might be refugees or homeless or something.
If MDC took government and the war veterens escalated their insurgency, do you really think Zimbabwe would be that much different from Iraq? an escalating out of control war?
We have all seen the gang attack on the MDC rally the other day. Does anyone believe this sort of fighting would cease with an MDC government? If SADC peace keepers or England/US troops manage to repress the gang attacks, will they turn to such things as suicide bombings as the Palestinians did when their sticks and stones intifada was repressed?
Sadam and Mugabe are similar in that they both towed the US line up until a time…. when they didn’t. US concern in both cases began when the corrupt regimes stopped towing the line, not when they started oppressing their populations. Civilian genocide was just collateral damage for the defense of US interests while the regimes were friendly.
US/England wants war in Zimbabwe because its prime concern is its investments, not the well being of the population.
The foreign military presense in Iraq has barely even tried to be peace keepers, their role is simply to protect US interests such as oil wells and pipes and the necessary bureacracy for those projects protected in the green zone.
Foreign intervention into Zimbabwe will most likely take the form of escorting white farmers back to their farms and guarding them while civil chaos and deaths through gang attacks (or suicide bombes) in the towns and communal areas will be tolerated as collateral damage.
A negotiated peace however is another matter.
There has been a negotiated agreement in the past, the Lancaster House agreement between Mugabe regime, England and the white farmers, but all 3 parties have not honoured this agreement.
John wrote, in part: “US concern in both cases began when the corrupt regimes stopped towing the line, not when they started oppressing their populations.”
That may be so, John (though I think it’s over-simplified). But there are plenty of folk in Australia, bloggers included, who do NOT take their lead from the US State Dept or US multinationals, and MANY of these decided years ago that Mugabe was – on balance – causing more harm than good in Zimbabwe. Poverty, hunger, loss of civil rights, loss of democratic opportunities, etc.
There are other African nations which are doing better than Zimbabwe in feeding their own people and letting their own people have a say in daily life. Why? How? Some of those nations are former colonies of Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, etc etc So it appears to me that a colonial background is NOT a determinant of the fate of a nation. You seem to argue that it is. I’m looking at Africa empirically John, not theoretically: the actual lived experience in 2008. And as far as I can see, there are no countries where your ideal of “multinationals-out, farmer/cooperatives in” is successful.
If you know of one, kindly let us know. Otherwise your prescription remains a pipe-dream, and I believe it’s an insupportable smokescreen for a brutal regime.
cheerio
Given the numbers of white farmers killed in the aftermath of the Lancaster House agreement it could certainly be said that Mugabe failed to honour the agreement.
John Tracy, I am not sure which you are the most clueless about, military matters or farming.
Military protection of the life of individual farmers will be expensive in sheer manpower let alone cash, considering each farmer is living in scattered farmsteads surrounded by natural features in which lurk hostile guerrillas.
Protection of the farm production (ie despastured livestock & crops in the field) will however be impossible.
Farmers cannot farm without the consent of the population within which they farm. End of story.
Saddam had stewardship of the world’s greatest known reserves of oil. He marketed himself as a bulwark against both communism and Shiite Islamism. For these attributes successive US administrations were prepared to ignore Saddam’s brutality and to stomach his nationalisation of Iraq’s oil. Geopolitics trumped commercial interests.
Zimbabwe’s white farmers grew peanuts. No one cared enough to do anything about Mugabe when he proved unwilling/unable to protect these farmers from “veterans”.
Even Bush should know that it would be a very bad look for white farmers to return to Zimbabwe under US military protection. No one cares enough to do anything dramatic in relation to Zimbabwe, let alone sending in troops to bully black folks for the supposed benefit of white farmers.
The number of white farmers who would return to their land in Zimbabwe under any circumstances could be counted on one hand.
Farmers are a unique breed. Hardworking, self-reliant, shaping with their hands their future and that of their issue.
Definition of a nutter: A person who in 2008 could not take up land in Zimbabwe, without a platoon of diggers/jarheads/tommys to do so, but still proceeded with taking up said land.
The future of such an enterprise would at best be extremely short lived, the life expectancy of the farmer/occupier just as shaky.
There wouldn’t be any takers.
Ambigulous,
It seems to me the only pipe dream is your fantasy that MDC agrarian reform policy will allow a farmer to grow food to share with neighbors and export the surplus (@135) as well as your various comments about efficiency and education in farming. Apart from being a total misrepresentation of MDC policy, this pipedream indicates a very shallow understanding of the situation informing a very definite personal opinion. Some might go so far as to say it represents a cultural norm, an assumed logic beyond test rather than a conclusion from analysis.
Of the many folk and bloggers that you seem to have osmosed an opinion from, how many of them have sourced their opinion from MSM reports? And just to be cheeky to dispell any illusions of my capacity for civility, how many of these influential commentators were white?
“Of the many folk and bloggers that you seem to have osmosed an opinion from, how many of them have sourced their opinion from MSM reports? And just to be cheeky to dispell any illusions of my capacity for civility, how many of these influential commentators were white?”
On the first point, even if you’re right that would seem a better source than Zanu PF agitprop websites, but in any case if it’s slavish followers of press you’re after, I suspect you’re in the wrong place.
On the second point, once more you demonstrate a preoccupation with race. Personally, I’m much more concerned with stealing, murder and starvation.
John Tracy @91 claims to be running a thread with a critique of MDC policies/methods, with some emphasis on the “white farmer” origins of that party.
In post #87 blithely states that he won’t be entering into any discussion on the (trade union) origins of the MDC, on the grounds that he knows nothing of any trade union aspect of the MDC.
Thanks FDB,
Mr Tracey seems to think my sources of information can only be other bloggers or the MSM.
I know farmers and have worked with them; I know a little of farming. I’ve talked to Africans. I have sources other than the MSM. I suspect practically every Australian has sources other than the MSM. People talk amongst themselves, John! And I trust such organisations as the UN and Amnesty International, by and large.
Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001
Where do people come up w/ such stupid ideas?
I see the Murdoch media has been poking its nose into foreign affairs again. Strange how much suffering seems to happen everytime Murdoch & the bulk of his papers/news organisations get involved & try to manipulate events…& create political puppets.
This is an intriguing thread. John Tracey is no fool. Many truisms…but…time moves on…and events reshape thinking & ownership…and none will SHARE whilst FEAR & HATE & DIVISION come as HELLCLONE.
John, who do you think Mr. Mugabe should stand down for? Ambigulous? Mark? Others?
I’m worried that Tsvangirai’s connections to the World Bank, International Monetary Fund & other grand manipulators & saboteurs (too often friends of war-mongering/constructing corporate heavyweights who benefit THE FEW over THE MANY), will let loose in Zimbabwe The International Commission for the Betterment of Corn and Wheat (CIMMYT), financed by the Rockefeller Foundation & other GMO promoting crop mega-companies such as Monsanto, Novartis, Syngenta, Dupont-Pioneer, Dow…& think of victim’s like Armando Villareal (think Mexico).
This is worth reading:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/25/zimbabwe.foreignpolicy?commentpage=1
Personally, I reckon Mugabe needs to reflect on how his once brave & intelligent stand has turned into a disaster for his people. He can put up walls & invite Cubans & Bolivarian Revolutionary types in to bring about crop growing & healthcare experience, fair enuff…teachers of how to be isolated and survive the HATE of the corporate West so to speak…
or he can reach out to Trade Unions & semi-left politicians the likes of which we have here in Australia…
And in the process call off the election for now, & the thugs/bullies who are not representative of Mr. Mugabe’s once great DREAM…
And for the good of the country & its long suffering people, STAND DOWN.
Give the reins of power to a COMPROMISE individual. And they, by building BRIDGES w/ the other CARETAKERS & GUARDIANS of Zimbabwe can look to a new Democratic way. Let the LIGHT shine on Zimbabwe…& will come the appropriate rain, the flourishing of the crops…& the jobs.
Please stand down Mr. Mugabe, before the neighboring African nations feel compelled & bullied to bring about a CATASTROPHIC end to a DREAM…still running thru that head…but lacking clarity in the FOG of PARANOIA & FEAR. And sleepless nights.
Let THE LIGHT shine on Zimbabwe…and open up so FRESH AIR can be breathed by ALL.
Steve you may well be right and if you are it is another reason for the futility of the intervention mode. If you are right, it seems that only a negotiated settlement is possible? or war.
I may not share your one dimensional notion of agriculture or your romantic portrait of white farmers, but I am not ignorant of agricultural matters. I am an advocate of sustainable agriculture, localised markets, appropriate technology and land reform. I say this is a far better mode for the third world and the affluent world to produce food than the oil and technology intensive modes of agribusiness and global stock exchanges as practised by Monsanto, the Rockefeller network and MacDonalds (who LP gives free advertising to).
I do not know what Mugabe thinks of sustainable agriculture but the MDC program procludes it and where it already exists wants to transform it into agribusiness modes.
It is a matter of the value of food. Does the hard working white farmer grow food because of its nutritional value or because of its dollar value. How much, of the dollar value, of the crop stays in Zimbabwe and how much is leached from the economy into global sharemarket returns?
Do the “pilferers” you described earlier steal fertiliser because of its dollar value and their illegitimate greed or so they can grow food because they have none?
I thank you for your previous honesty in supporting Rhodesia, it seems that most others share your reasoning but are too scared to be percieved as politically incorrect if they said it, although Marks assertion that “The country’s colonial history is a fact. It can’t be undone.” comes close.
nasking,
“John, who do you think Mr. Mugabe should stand down for? Ambigulous? Mark? Others?”
Although I don’t know Ambigulous or Mark beyond their comments here, I doubt if they would be appropriate replacements for Mugabe. They would be too likely to conform to the interest of foreign capital. I would have to choose “others”
Thinking in terms of personalities is how the media reduces and sensationalises things and it is the mechanism for shallow demonisation (Emmanuel Goldstein).
What needs to occur as I see it is a negotiation between groupings such as the veterans, the white farmers, the municipal councils, the trade unions etc. I know this is difficult and unlikely but if I was in charge thats what my interim government would do.
It is not a matter of who sits in the chair or whose name is on the ballot paper but a matter of direct engagement with the real networks organisations and tribal structures on the ground. – a process not a president. I fear a SADC inspired national unity government will just stabilise foreign investment but perhaps it may be able to broker some peace.
Steve,
Here is a recent communique from the International Socialist Organisation of Zimbabwe.
http://links.org.au/node/489
I do not know if they are any more relevant to Zimbabwe than the trots are to Australia, but their perspective is applied to the situation of the unions and workers.
They support the MDC, and I do not. They are calling for a boycott of a national unity government (as trots do) whereas I seem to be advocating such a thing.
But I agree with their analysis of recent changes to MDC and its priorities in this election.
They no more about Zimbabwe union stuff than me.
“k” for those who find such things important.
John Tracey,
I would have thought that the person he should stand down for is the one that would have won the election if the murder of 80+ people had not made that impossible. If he is not successful in that role, then the people can elect someone else at the next election. Odd thought, allowing the people to choose, but possibly viable.
Dear nasking and John,
I’m not available to rule Zimbabswe
Zimbabwe should be led by a Zimbabwean (so I’m ineligible), with a freely elected Parliament, an incorruptible police force, an army that generally stays in its barracks, an independent judiciary, an honest electoral commission, etc.
Several African countries have achieved and maintained a system of government that is reasonably democratic, despite the heavy burden of a colonial past. Crikey, so has Australia! Not perfect, just many hundred percent better than the miserable mess that Mugabe has made of Zimbabwe.
There are other messes, John. Burma, Tibet are topical; but many other nations teeter on the brink of despotism.
By the way, I’m all for growing one’s own veges on a small plot of land (three cheers for Peter Cundall), it just doesn’t make sense to me to try to base a whole nation’s food system on such a foundation. Yes, of course fertiliser manufacturers and seed distributors and supermarkets take a % of the product (or surplus), but in my view that’s a very small price to pay, in a well-developed country. It may be a higher price in a poor underdeveloped nation, but I’d argue that the eradication of HUNGER should always be a higher priority than the eradication of PROFIT.
In other words, John: I put FOOD higher on a scale of value than MONEY. I fear that some “radicals” become so focussed on MONEY (surplus value, bastard greedy plundering capitalists, unfair trade, etc) that they lose sight of the basics of life, among which are FOOD and laughter. Are you one such person, John? I hope not.
Update…..
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/25/2285624.htm
it appears Mr. Tsvangerai does not want SADC peacekeepers but UN ones.
he wants a foreign force for “active isolation” which required “a force to protect the people”.
I wonder who he wants to “isolate” by force? The sovereignty movement perhaps? Just another revolution of the merry go round?
I wonder how the war veterans and the youth gangs will react to being “isolated” by foreign forces?
It will take a lot of peace keepers to isolate the Zimbabwe army.
Tsvengerai is already distancing himself from the SADC and aligning himself with US policy which, whether or not they have enough fuel in the tank to make it happen, is a path to war.
Tsvengerai…..”We do not want armed conflict, but the people of Zimbabwe need the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force,”
Should we send troops as with Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor, Pacific Islands, The Northern Territory?
Thank God Australia’s position is for an SADC solution.
To those who asked me how far must ZANU PF go before they would lose my vote, I ask how far can the MDC leadership go before you will at least begin to question them?
MDC leadership would have to go a long way to be worse than what Zimbabwe has already got.
A Hitler or a Stalin would still be an improvement on Mugabe.
Tsvangeri would have to be a downright Pol Pot to be worse than Mugabe.
Electing the MDC would demonstrate that Zimbabwe has an electoral process, and that if the people so desire, the government can be changed.
An economic system in which Zimbabwe integrates itself into the world market by growing agricultrual produce (food n stuff) to export world market has been sneered at by John Tracey, from as early as post #5.
Even though such an approach seems to have worked out quite well for New Zealand.
No Ambigulous. The commodification of food for consumption in global markets is, as I see it, the essense of the problem. I m sorry if I was not clear in the comment but my point was white farmers and MDC policy farm for the dollar and black farmers farm for food. This surplus idea is great but it makes sense and more money to sell in the first instance to local markets. I am not at all opposed to cash crops for the global market. A single desk marketing scheme, contrary to MDC policy, seems the best method for such trade rather than the corporate monopolies controling price and markets as is MDC policy.
And sustainable agriculture is a considerably bigger thing than the blooming marvelous Peter Cundall’s prescriptions for retirement and weekend hobbies.
“Yes, of course fertiliser manufacturers and seed distributors and supermarkets take a % of the product”
Ambigulous, I have no problem w/ fertilisers & seeds that have been altered, but I don’t generally trust companies preferred by the Busheviks & friends. I’m hoping the CSIRO will come up w/ the goods now CHANGES are happening. I HOPE.
Now, if I was going to clone anyone, Peter Cundall would be a top priority…;)
I’m not anti-science, I’m anti-killing seeds. And toxic fertilisers. And some CEOs & other shareholders who know nothing but GREED.
Bears like their berries fresh & poison-free. And not tasting like fish.
John Tracey, I have not romanticised white farmers in any way. Your familiary with agriculture seems suspicously as if it comes from nothing more than reading about it.
You however are romanticising black farmers. Your portrait of them is only short of headscarved women harmonising some tribal chant as they happily hoe the ground on their sustainable allotment.
So black people don’t farm for money eh? And pray tell, why are they so attached to poverty, pardon, I mean a “sustainable farming” lifestyle, that they don’t want more? (eg, a home with a non-dirt floor, conveyance with an internal combustion engine which can be used for visiting relatives in the city, & so on)?
Don’t you feel it is racist to believe that black people will farm only for what they can eat, while a white farmer will keep on working and produce a surplus to trade for a better lifestyle?
“Yes, of course fertiliser manufacturers and seed distributors and supermarkets take a % of the product”
Then surely it would be better for this % to remain in the Zimbabwe economy?
And it is not a % of the surplus it is the profit from the whole crop.
“Then surely it would be better for this % to remain in the Zimbabwe economy?”
Not necessarily, unless you’re simply opposed to trade per se. If what you’re saying is that Zimbabwe as a state entity should be self-sufficient, while at the same time decrying the legacy of colonial interference (one aspect of which is the very EXISTENCE of Zimbabwe as a state) then it seems to me you’re all confused. Why is self-sufficiency better? Why is “Zimbabwe” itself something you want to defend?
John Tracey wrote:
They won’t sell fertiliser for nothing – either it gets flogged and sold into another market where the price better reflects the value, or it doesn’t get sold.
No fertiliser = less crops, so the percentage profit in a reasonable year is something the farmers would not have produced anyway. You can’t eat socialist principles.
“You can’t eat socialist principles.”
Apart from the extremely short-lived rice paper edition of the Little Red Book, this is true.
David,
You clearly have little concept of sustainable agriculture. To cut a long story short, fertiliser should be sourced close to home and general management should enhance the fertility of the soil instead of leaching it and creating a perpetual dependence on fertiliser.
If you don’t understand this then think of what the blooming marvelous Peter Cundall says about compost. Then think big.
If you are still not convinced and remain committed to chemical agriculture then ask yourself why cant Zimbabwe mine and process its own phosphates instead of buying it from Rockefeller who produce it at places like Phosphate Hill, 50 k from the Dajarra community (predominantly Aboriginal) near Mt. Isa. Phosphates are mined here and processed with the sulphuric acid waste from Mt. Isa mines (therefore its green! – recycling) and shipped overseas. The traditional owners get nothing except a few traineeships and gardening jobs, a toxic environment and a hole where a hill used to be. and Australia gets a pittance by way of royalties while giving away massive tax exemptions for the construction of roads and infrastructure for the mine. The Rockefeller mob make massive profit from chemical fertiliser yet like its agricultural programs for Africa, the locals just get crumbs.
John Tracey, the Phosphate Hill mine is owned by Incitec Pivot, an Australian Stock Exchange-listed Australian company, not by the Rockefellers. Get the basics right.
John Tracey,
Even more basically, there are some good phosphate possibilities in Africa and a few good mines. (Rhetorical question alert) What is stopping them from producing more? Of course – corrupt kleptocrats in Africa!
As all power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely, the solution is simple. Reduce the powers of the governments. Introduce strong property rights. Rule of law. The basic things that work everywhere they are introduced.
Boring, nonspectacular they may be and not given to finding the easy solutions – but effective.
John Tracey appears to have confused farming with gardening.
Greg,
Phosphate Hiil is built with new “green” technology developed by the Rockefeller foundation who not only design the technical innovation but broker the deals to make it happen. The agricultural science components of MDC policy need to be understood in this light. This is what the Rockefeller foundation does. The complex was built by Bechtel, Halibuton’s and CIA’s engineering company and the first company into Iraq after Shock and Awe.
I said the “Rockefeller mob” and previously refered to the Rockefeller network which dominates agribusiness and the foundation is leading the push for the green revolution.
Some Brisbanites might know the community arts group “Feral Arts” which is the Brisbane shopfront for the Rockefeller foundation global community development project. They did music and video workshops with the Dajarra Aboriginal community while the project was being developed. These workshops including months of working on digital media was supposed to link remote artists to the rest of the world through the internet but not one single connection outside of Feral arts occured and there are no website or public records of any of this work. While it was all happening the land deals and environemtal assesments and government approval was going down and Feral Arts did nothing to assist these communications beyond saying, after the mine was constructed, the future of the Jadarra community is dependent of the philantropy of the mine in their community development report.
Steve in the Pub seems to have a 1950s notion of farming to match his 1950s attitude to Rhodesia.
You can get some pretty big gardens….http://www.wantfa.com.au/
Rockefeller – Incitec, all the same.
MDC, ZanuPF, all the same.
Bush, Castro, all the same.
right?
Somewhat related:
http://www.counterpunch.com/ross06232008.html
(Killing Farmers with Killer Seed, By JOHN ROSS)
SATP at 202
That may have been my fault. Although I’ve not yet discerned exactly what John has in mind for future Zimbabwean farming, I thought his subsistence model might as well be at the scale of what Aussies call a “large vege patch”. This may have been unfair. Perhaps he reckons a Zim farmer could do better with 2 acres, rather than a fraction of an acre.
I’m not suggesting that the average Aussie farm acreage can be “translated” across to Zimbabwe holus bolus; soil and climate conditions in parts of Zimbabwe are probably less harsh than in Australia.
But John Tracey still hasn’t provided an explanation for the deterioration in Zimbabwe’s food production (since 1995, say; or since 1965 if it comes to that). Neither has he told us of a country where his favoured farming methods are already demonstrating their practical success. And if he says it’s North Korea, I’m cancelling my subscription to “Earth Garden”
John Tracey do you have any evidence at all to support your assertions about Rockefeller Foundation involvement in the development of the phosphate Hill mine? Given that you have been caught out in making fictitous statements about the ownwership of the Phosphate Hill mine the least you can do is provide that evidence if you want to be taken seriously at all.
Also do you have any evidence at all about the Feral Arts Group being a front for the Rockefeller Foundation? If so please provide it. Your word on the matter isn’t good enough.
Greg,
Feral Arts used to advertise Rockefeller on their website with the “Globosaurus” project and they attended various international converences hosted by rockefeller. I notice they have no such links anymore but here is a link that speaks of their work with Rockefeller.
http://www.comminit.com/en/node/121335
and
http://www.globosaurus.net/gs_subscribe.htm
Phosphate Hillis easily connected to bechtel who built it. Their website used to promote it as a signature project in green technology which is where Rockefeller came ito it. But I am sorry I can’t find a link to that.
This confirms bechtels link
http://www.chemicals-technology.com/projects/phosphatehill/
This link puts WMC as the owner as it was when Feral Arts were there. WMC is very much part of the Rockefeller network.
I would not be surprised if the plant was built by Bechtel/WMC for the purpose of selling it off on the stock exchange. This what they did with another signature project, the first in the world to be financed as well as built by Bechtell – the Milmerran power station which was flogged off as soon as it came on line. Bechtels dominance of the Australian energy industry and the push to privatisation is another story.
apart from the “green” technology connection to Rockefeller I also did a more thorough search of corporate connections when Feral Arts was in Dajarra (but a virus took out all my notes) and there are many links between rockefeller and Bechtel through joint ventures etc. which i am not enclined to re-research right now. Bechtel was set up by the Rockefeller empire.
Greg,
I just posted an answer to your question but it has got caught in moddaraytion, probably because of too many links.
Just as progressives who made ‘The life of Brian’ exposed the bankrupts involved in Lemingist sects by putting forward the question “What did the Romans ever do for us?”, a well mannered pseudo-leftist holding to a consistently reactionary point of view has held the (enlarging) mirror up to the bloggers at Lavartus Prodeo and shocked them with their own features. ‘No Mark, the developed nations standard of living is obscene and the root cause of African poverty.’ Oh dear.
Where he hasn’t stunned people into silence he has often forced them into distorting his position because much of what he has said they have had to agree with. Small is beautiful right-wing green policies, like Permaculture: rather than openly left support for industrialized farming or defending a reactionary sovereignty rather than a developing internationalism and supporting ‘cultural exceptional-ism’ rather than supporting universal human rights and so on.
But the regular bloggers at LP know they do not share his view when it comes to abandoning the masses and their struggle for democracy (nothing more than bourgeois democracy) in Zimbabwe. LP regulars want an end to tyranny but though of course JT theoretically would as well, he is incapable of seeing any progressive features in the bourgeois revolution that is required at this time and place.
John Tracey in posting in so detailed and such an intellectually consistent manner has done well. He has caused everyone to pause and shake their heads. How can such a view be described as left? Yet innocent novices who come across such reactionary twaddle mistake it for just that, and then quickly reject the ‘left’. But in doing, so they simply reject the quintessential pseudo left.
Disbelief is palpable in the way people have responded to JT. His conservative defense of tyranny against international efforts of bourgeois forces to end it with the required launching of a bourgeois democratic revolution is entirely familiar. He has reminded everyone that one can construct all manner of clever arguments for not standing up for the oppressed against the oppressor, but in doing so one leaves behind any left politics.
For example he called the Iraqi government and the politicians elected in the free and fair elections in Iraq ‘puppets’ and no one told him that this was rubbish! Mark, Katz, Kim etc all kept silent, as well they might.
JT that’s rubbish; these politicians are anything but puppets and people on this site are not calling your bluff on this because of their failure to aid the Iraqi masses in the past; they are going silent because the bourgeois revolution is now up and running in the Middle East and they failed to support the start of this revolution and they are only just getting around to revising their positions.
FDB finally twigged that JT would have openly preferred Saddam to stay in power rather than see the revolution that is unfolding. JT is not any sort of genuine leftist at all. He is a classic opponent of revolution; he hates the bourgeois forces and is delighted to put forward policies that would keep tyrants in place.
Close to seven years after 9/11 and clearly neck deep into the struggle to bring bourgeois democracy to the Middle East along comes Zimbabwe and people are now prepared to screw their brain back in and think about the problems involved in overthrowing an armed tyrant. This is very good progress.
Compare to the foolishness of last year.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/01/04/scourging-the-surge/#comment-285708
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/01/04/scourging-the-surge/#comment-285731
Oh well, this was an interesting thread…
I never said I was left. I said LP claims to be left and implied that Catalaxy are more left than LP.
I used to call myself left.
I used to call myself an anarchist but the anarchists excommunicated me.
I think it was Adrien who identified syndicalism which I don’t challenge, but for those who like to put people in boxes perhaps the indigenist label might fit, but the indigenes might disagree..
As for the bourgoise revolution. when the working class ever gives a flying phark about Aboriginal Australia then I may see some hope in what you say. When the trade unions were first being formed and Australia and the working class flexed its muscle was the exact same time that the surviving remnant of the Aboriginal wars were being rounded up as prisoners of war into reserves. The socialist demand for equal wages was the direct cause of the mass disposession from traditional lands in the 70s and the resultant poverty and social disasters such as the Alice Springs town camps.
The working class in Australia is a colonial imposition and their racism is no less severe than the ruling class, whatever your analysis of the cause of racism.
This is perhaps the underlying perspective behind my commentary on Zimbabwe.
It is not a matter of black and white. The most brutal agents of massacre in this country were Aboriginal people – the native police.
Similarly, I do not think race is an issue in the conflicting interests of the small working class and the massive peasentry.
Patrick has admirably regurgitated the traditional Marxist racism in his attitude to peasents, a racism that Mao managed to adapt out of the program but Patrick and his comrades still embrace as Lenin did and as the Red Army did when they stole all the food from the peasents to feed the urban workers causing mass starvation amongst the Russian peasents.
Similarly the Marxist/Lenninist obsession to embrace industrialisation as the answer to all problems, hence their uneasy alliance with MDC development program, may well have made sense in 19th and 20th century Europe but now and in Zimbabwe or here, especially in the light of climate change and ecological collapse, such absolute prescription to industrialisation is unforgivable.
Sorry if I was confusing, the sentence beginning “Similarly, I do not….” is refering to Zimbabwe.
John Tracey wrote:
Yes John. I only work in the industry, we clearly know nothing about agriculture and all the productivity improvements on Australian farms that have been achieved through private investment and government research are a figment of our imaginations. Our farmers know nothing about grain/graze cycles to enrich the soil with nitrogen without overuse of fertilizer, or about native grasses, or about the sustainability of mono-culture grain enterprises, or about soil and water table management learned through the hard lessons in WA.
Sigh.
David,
The basis of the Australian agricultural industry is secure title to land which underpins all other economic activity. This is the same in Zimbabwe, the problem is the vast majority cannot get title to land because the white people own it all.
If you are as familiar as you say with sustainable agriculture (I mean ecologicaly sustainable not just economically) then your comment @ 197 is absurd.
The comment @197 is bang on the nail accurate.
John Tracey, please deconstruct comment #197 so that the rest of us are able to see the absurdity you claim is there.
Steve,
A system of organic farming designed specifically to be independent of corporate fertilising regimes is probably not going to be too affected by the market fluctuations of corporate fertiliser, except through increased competitiveness of the organic product as the corporate fertilising regimes become more expensive or fail through market driven supply shortages.
Everyone,
I gave up worrying about dominating this thread hundreds of posts ago and I thank LP for their tolerence (or non-intervention) in this regard.
But I think I have put a position on the table, take it or leave it. I’ve finished now
Thank you to the punters involved for a fascinating discussion.
Thank you yoo, John. You have been civil.
Will you still be voting for Comrade Mugabe tomorrow?
On agriculture, I support Dave Rubie’s comments at 11.47pm last night. In my case, the “little” knowledge of agriculture I have is from Gippsland and NZ dairying, and NZ dry land sheep farming. I’m aware of: programs (inc scientific, agronomic results) on using less fertiliser – hence reduced runoff of nutrients, improving animal welfare, reducing energy use in the dairy, OHS for milking workers, widespread use of personal computers for many aspects of farm management, recycling cow poo as fertiliser, improved ploughing methods, etc etc Then there’s animal nutrition, genetics, etc It’s not all Bechtel and Rockefeller out there on the farms, JT.
JT: your focus on the white farmers has another unpleasant aspect. It reminds me of that moment in the New Testament when JC criticises someone for “complaining about the mote in a person’s eye, when he has a wooden beam lodged in his own eye”. You focus on the white farmers. How many of those were there? One of the effects of your focus, is that you downplay the conditions under which hundreds of thousands (millions?) of black Zimbabweans lived then and live now. That, I submit, is an inhumane perspective.
cheerio
A system of organic farming, designed to be free of “corporate fertiliser regimes” is not a farming enterprise, it is a political statement.
Such a farming operation would also experience freedom from high yields, which was the point of post #197.
John Tracey, you DO seem to be confusing gardening with farming.
John Tracey,
Thanks for an interesting discussion – pity you have withdrawn. On LP’s tolerance I would have to agree. They put up with me almost all of the time.
Voting for Mugabe?
People like this are delusional communist perverts. I mean that literally. Call me General Ripper if it makes you happy.
Mugabe should be executed ASAP. His crimes against humanity rank alongside the Nazis, Pol Pot, Stalin, Pinochet…etc.
Thankfully everyone else is sane. Actually the regulars are aquitting themselves quite well as pragmatic social democrats.
Mark,
You suddenly came over all RWDB. Been hanging around Blair too much recently?
General Ripper?
Great to have you back, old bean! Still a bit worried about the old fluoridation malarkey? Still very loyal to Coca Cola machines when there’s a potential global catastrophe looming?
Yours cllegially,
Group Captain Mandrake
(I never made it back to old Limey, as it turned out. Still…. wouldn’t have missed the big event for the world, and I have you to thank for that, I suppose…..)
“People like this are delusional communist perverts. I mean that literally.”
There’s no need for this, Mark.
Delusional, perverted, both could be said to apply. But “Communist”?
Unless one is showing solidarity with the communist party of china, big investors and sponsors of Mugabe.
Anyway, it was Colonel Bat Guano whose line it was about “deviated preverts”. Planning, of course, a mutiny of preverts.
Ah, those were the days, eh Liam? Skulking in a cinema in Melb, emerging white as a sheet I recall. Damn film makers. Preverts.
But what a leap for Peter Sellers, from “The Goons” on radio to “The Mouse That Roared” and “Dr Strangelove”. I dips me lid.
come to think of it, there’s a clear line on the ‘absurdity of war’ from Milligan’s “Goon Show” scripts to the whole of “Dr Strangelove”.
John Tracey is quite right when he says;
‘It is unrealistic to expect this national revolutionary infrastructure to dissolve itself because its political opposition wins an election.’
People posting and commenting at LP are looking to the future in Zimbabwe and are realistically assuming that the bloodshed will get worse as the regime clings to power via ‘the barrel of a gun’. Mark who, as I recall, supports the armed struggle being waged in the wilds of Afghanistan(and the Australian intervention in East Timor)prides himself on being realistic, as do Katz and Kim. So we can assume that they all expect such a bloody tyranny to use whatever levels of violence it deems necessary against any sections of the Zimbabwean population that challenges ‘…this national (what I would term counter) revolutionary infrastructure…’ for power.
Now that they have declared that they are not handing over political power via any method of voting, we can therefore ‘cast away illusions and prepare for struggle’. ZANU PF will not be defeated without armed struggle. Mugabe may well die soon but that won’t end the tyranny. Barbarism will continue and because free and fair elections can no longer be held, power will if not prevented, pass to the next tyrant.
Many in the west, especially with an ‘anti-war’ and ‘anti-imperialist’ background will just shrug their shoulders and wish it wasn’t so. Some, perhaps most, will advocate that the unarmed masses in Zimbabwe liberate themselves and proclaim loudly that that is the only way it can be done; that there are no short cuts, and that the enormous difficulties and resultant casualties will just have to be lived with.
But others will advocate for armed intervention by the regional powers, notably South Africa.
I am in favor of urgent military intervention, but I regret that the military intervention that I advocate and believe will ultimately eventuate, will not be anywhere near urgent enough!
I think a call by progressives urging the Australian government to send a military commission to Southern African states to assist with contingency planning and pre-positioning of forces and material that may (but in my view will) become necessary is a no brainer.
Australia has a reactionary government of millionaires and yuppies and so we can expect them to be late with support, and offer little as they instead deliver miserable ‘sound bytes’ rather than prepare public opinion for the required effort. But progressive activists ought to at least ‘hold the blow torch to their bellies’. The slaughter has started already so nobody will be able to say later when it gets worse that they didn’t know even the very basics of what to do. We do know that contingency forces must be prepared now. We have seen sufficient barbarism unfold on the African continent to realize that international forces must prepare to step in and stop it.
A bloody crisis has arisen and Australia has a very large role to play (because we are capable of rendering assistance and it would be a crime not to). Bourgeois forces must help develop bourgeois norms throughout the world. Industrialized people who will not defend such a pathetic level of democracy in a timely manner (and do so in a global context rather than in a retreat from international responsibilities) could not possibly hope to go beyond this to any bright future (socialist or otherwise, and with or without cooler or warmer changes in the weather).
Defending the vote is basic stuff. This tyrant ought to be made to pay a consequence in order to intimidate tyrants the world over! Ending tyranny across the globe ought to be the goal of anyone claiming the title of progressive, but the way we eat such a large meal is as usual ‘mouthful by mouthful’. This mouthful is now before us and we either eat it or abandon the concept of progressive politics and slink off with John Tracey denouncing the horrors of the modernity we live in and the vast opportunities that industrialization provides (because the planet won’t allow it no less!).
No leftist could remain silent in the face of this blatant attack on the basic democratic rights of people. It can’t be that the U.S., British, and Australian administrations could speak louder or clearer in support of the masses in Africa than those who define their politics fundamentally as standing with the oppressed against the oppressor.
While people are still coming to terms with why a ‘Movement for Democratic Change’ is required, it’s well to remember that it’s valid to criticize actual policies of the MDC as it exists, but that criticism must be in the context of support for the majority parties forming the government. People can then remind us that in addition to free and fair elections a civil society is also required if a true democracy is to be defended, but they must remind us of this in the context of their support for voting and respect for its outcome!
John Tracey has provided a shock therapy for progressive political forces to address the question ‘who are our friends and who are our enemies’. His criticisms require detailed refutation and his anti-democratic foundations exposed along with his vacuous anti- imperialism.
However, I do not believe he ought to be condemned to the category of enemy just yet. There are still large sections of the Zimbabwean population that are voting for ZANU and they have to be divided and divided again. The job is to unite the many to defeat the few, and only isolate the few beneficiaries of this tyranny. John Tracey is no such beneficiary but his views are toxic.
‘Democracy, that process by which a citizen puts a mark on a piece of paper every several years is a British cultural structure and mythology imposed onto Africa. It is the democratic constitution itself that until recently entrenched white control of land in Zimbabwe.
This ritual of choosing politicians in no way provides the structure for the will of the people to be expressed and executed, it is simply the justification, the authorisation of an elite to govern on its own terms and priorities.’
His views as expressed above (utterly rejected in the case of Zimbabwe by LP posters) actually reflect the views many have expressed about the democratic government in Iraq. John Tracy believes the MDC are puppets as he thinks the politicians in Afghanistan and Iraq (and even East Timor) are, and he has made a consistent criticism of the ways these forces have co-operated with imperialists.
As the democratically elected government of Iraq drive the men in black off the streets of Basra etc people who formally expressed views like; ‘Don’t you see the genius of Moqtada’s political manoeuvres?’ are still coming to terms with how they got it so terribly wrong. Within another eighteen months we will see the next scheduled elections in Iraq and welcome them for what they are – actual progress and part of the real process in turning another part of the globe into a place even remotely fit for human habitation.
It’s true that democracy means more than just free and fair elections but it’s also true that it does not mean less than that. Defending the masses in Zimbabwe against a former ally in the anti-war movement only demonstrates the further collapse of that very movement.
can’t let this go, but I’ll be brief. Wont tackle Iraq here, off topic. Patrick if you want to suggest another forum (step outside mate! – only joking) I will be in a headspce before long to solve the problems of Iraq.
But your continual use of the word barbarism and implied path of social evolution of the peasents well represents what I said about the racism inherent in European Marxism. In Marx and Engels time, when the theories were developed, frontline of antropology was promoting the notion of eugenics, as you do, which provided the intelectual justification for the colonisation of Australia, South Africa, Zimbabwe by such enlightend bourgoise revolutionaries as Cecil Rhodes and Joseph Banks.
Engels described the Australian Aborigine as the lowest rung of savagery, barely only evolved basic verbal communication and eons away from even barbarism. This understanding is amongst the underpinnings of Marx and Lenins understandings of imperialism, and apparently yours too.
Klaus -
It is necessary, old bean. I knew a delusional communist pervert once.
.
His perversion didn’t have anything to do with his communism nor did his delusions. His communism was worn for effect and to allow him to get drunk at campus parties and trap some hapless undergrad into hearing the story of his father, the clerk.
.
Anyway, the pain, the pain. (Yes he did sound like Dr Smith.) His terrible pain at growing up working class in England, hence insisting on an Althusserian reading of Crocodile Dundee. How that helps, he didn’t say.
.
His delusion was that he imagined himself interesting and his perversion was that he was not asexual. Or the other way around, I forget.
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Sexual: Or Sek-sue-uhl as he’d say. Cambridge. There’s something about Cambridge.
PatrickM’s 3rd paragraph synopsises the outlook for Zimbabwe.
so, patrickm, in practical terms “what is to be done?” – persuade Federal MPs to send planners followed by troops? Let’s not just send Malcolm Fraser like we did to stop apartheid in its tracks
I don’t know Ambigulous – perhaps him running around Zim without pants would do a lot to calm things down.
John Tracy has resorted to exaggeration and diversion rather than grapple with any substantive issues involved with recognizably progressive politics that really do require one to stand with the oppressed against the oppressor.
My post is about the here and now of Zimbabwe and how that reflects back on the peculiar stand that people at LP have taken in other parts of the globe where the issue of defending democratic norms are also put starkly before us.
For example ‘But your continual use of the word barbarism’ actually I used the word twice and I’d be happy to replace this quite reasonable word with another. Oppression. Here goes.
Oppression will continue and because free and fair elections can no longer be held, power will if not prevented, pass to the next tyrant.
And
We have seen sufficient oppression unfold on the African continent to realize that international forces must prepare to step in and stop it.
JT then goes on to rant about how I am a promoter of eugenics providing no evidence and I feel no need to deal with any voices that may have planted those thoughts from within his own head.
At least I have managed to get him to disavow being on the left politically and that’s a major breakthrough because some (actually quite a lot of young people in particular) would think that when they are coming across such conservative appeals for an understanding of and preservation of tyranny they are dealing with some ‘left’ position.
I think a united front in opposition to the anti-democratic forces in Zimbabwe is called for. I think armed forces must be ready to act and governments around the world should be assisting the neighboring states of southern Africa prepare for a speedy intervention AND joining them. I acknowledge this would be more complicated than just a speedy act of liberation and would require years of restructuring and political reforms driven by an MDC of some sort so I am glad the Zimbabweans have one to start from.
What I know for certain is that I do not want to say nothing and turn my back as bourgeois forces did when Rwanda broke wide open. If people think it won’t get as bad as that they are probably right. But they ought to conceive of being wrong and prepare accordingly.
At any rate the much smaller numbers being beaten and hacked to death now for daring to vote the wrong way deserve soldiers to protect them NOW.
GregM,
I eagerly await your next post.
You have twice accused me of providing fictitious information which, I believe, I have substantiated on both counts.
You owe me an apology.
I shall not be able to rest until it is forthcoming.
Sorry, John Tracey, but I cannot find any link between Bechtel, WMC and the “Rockefeller Empire” as you allege. Bechtel was a family company (albeit a big one) and WMC (Western Mining Corporation) was a WA listed miner, founded in Kalgoorlie.
You may have some information that I do not have, but I see nothing beyond your bald assertions that may constitute evidence.
In any case, ownership of a single phosphate mine does not convey control of the world supply of fertilizers.
Andrew, Bechtel is not a family company and has included George Schultz and various members of US govt and CIA on its board. It is however a private company, not listed on the stock exchange, which means their business affairs are not accountable or transperant as exchange listed companies are..
Have you heard of google? you should try it before suggesting I am wrong. try WMC and Rockefeller. rockefeller and bechtel and see what you come up with.
Save you some time, I googled myself.
“The Bechtel Truth”
http://www.sea-us.org.au/roxby/bechteltalk.html
A bit outdated but you get the idea – and has stuff on WMC too.
Also, and considering WMC’s branching into the global fertiliser it is interesting that one of their founders, Arvi Parbo sits on the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering,”Supporting International Agricultural research ” board, assisted by…….The Rockefeller foundation by way of their Bellagio conference facility in Italy, the same place where Feral Arts attended their global community development conferences.
http://www.atse.org.au/index.php?sectionid=140
I am trying to shut up.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, WMC’s W.A. operations (but they were much much bigger than that as “the Bechtel truth” link shows) were joint ventures with Esso, if you need further proof of connection to the Rockefeller empire.
But since I am here now,
I just wanted to say that the current US position on Zimbabwe, and the threats if not actuality of U.S. military involvement have much much more to do with the U.S. election than the Zimbabwe one.
As race becomes an issue in the U.S. presidential election this is the perfect time to be sabre rattling about black despots. If Bush can manage to Leave Obama with the legacy of a U.S. intervention into Africa it would be a master stroke.
goodbye.
Me again, sorry.
My googling about WMC on Andrew’s behalf has raised a question that I wonder if anyone can help with.
Is Hugh Morgan – Arvi Parbo’s co-director of WMC and former reserve bank director – connected to the American Morgan banking family, the bankers of the rockefeller empire?
His father’s name is Bill but that is all I can find at present.
This is an interesting report on the April SADC emergency summit meeting. It certainly provides some background on the recent stronger line taken by the SADC, and points to an overall lessening of influence from the old guard towards progressives in the region:
http://www.swradioafrica.com/pages/whatwenton160408.htm
John Tracey,
You join a tradition of voluble LP posters who announce they will bow out of a thread and later can’t resist coming back. Did it meself, once. Cheers.
John Tracey,
I googled what you suggested and came up with such a group of racist tirades against jews that even I was shocked. Page after page of it. If that is the sort of “evidence” on which you rely I suggest that to examine it closely would be a Godwin’s law breach. Repulsive.
In any case, from your own link:
So – it is a family company. Thanks. The WMC link is tenuous at best.
If anti-Jewish tirades are the best you can do it substantially reduces my opinion of you.
John Tracey,
With the question about Hugh Morgan you are also starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist. Morgan is a common name – not everyone is part of a conspiracy.
Andrew, what I said was correct and your petty nit-picking attempts to discredit me makes your ignorant denialism as transparent as Greg M’s comments.
I have no problem with questions like “do you have any evidence” but the assertion that I am a liar and making it up, and that the clear evidence is just anti-semeticism, is a clear indication of your own subconscious unease with what I am saying than it is with any deficiency in information or perspective on my part.
I encourage others to read the Bechtel link to see the racist tyrades and anti-semitism that Andrew alleges.
http://www.sea-us.org.au/roxby/bechteltalk.html
From the link…
“Bechtel is a private company still controlled by the Bechtel family, so it is not required under U.S. law to disclose its earnings.”
“And other friends like Dwight Eisenhower; and George Bush who orchestrated the Gulf War to protect American oil interests; and George Shultz, the US Secretary of State in the 1980’s who was a former President of Bechtel, and now Chairman; and Caspar Weinberger, a former Secretary of Defence in the U.S. Government was a chief counsel to to the corporation. And like John McCone, the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and a former Bechtel partner who delivered government support for privatizing the nuclear industry.”
But mafia is private family business too so I suppose Bechtel could be described as a family business.
Have spent a bit of time reading some materials in relation to land reform in Zimbabwe from 1980-2008, the effects of the IMF SAP during the 90’s, the effects of drought, the effects of limited access to global capital, incl. the US legislation ‘Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act’ of 2001, and also on endemic corruption of the Zim Govt. and of Zimbabwe’s enthusiastic participation in the Second Congo War in 1998 etc etc. there is no doubt, imho, that whatever excessive neo-liberal agenda lies hidden amongst the MDC’s mainly social-democratic polices – they are nought compared to the ongoing disintegration of the Zimbabwean economy, it’s civil society, the debasement of it’s press & judiciary and of course the brutalisation of the population – and the resulting inter-generational effects of that violence on both victims and perpetrators. There is of course contradictory economic indicators and interpretations around the SAP period etc – but these are minor compared to the mess the economy and entire country is now in.
There is however, agreement on the facts being that there was limited land reform in the 1980’s, an increase in farm outputs immediately after the war, there was compensation of white farmers paid by the UK Govt and donors in the 90s in respect of the first Land Acts, and a gradual altering of positions on all sides until 1999, where the Govt re-drafted the constitution to include compulsory acquisition without compensation but to their suprise lost the subsequent referendum in 2000. Whereupon the veterans (and others) took the law into their own hands and invaded the farms, whereby 2005, the Govt amended the law effectively nationalising farmlands.
Just a note about the displacement or dis-employment of the two to three hundred thousand farm workers in post-2000 farm invasion/land reform program – apparently many of these workers are regional immigrants and are routinely discriminated against in terms of land allocation and other services etc. This group has been given the smallest amount of land allocations overall, and together with white farmers voted en masse for the MDC. Politically, it would seem logical that the ZANU-PF would want to clear LSC farms of both white farmers and these farm workers.
JT linked to a Prof. Sam Mayo piece by which he updated his responses in respect of him posting this clarification:
This is not entirely correct as there were land reforms albeit at a slower pace pre-2000, and it was the Govt that took the amended constitution to the electorate, whereupon they lost and the farm invasions began immediately after this loss. There is also no mention by Mayo of the political benefits for Mugabe of clearing the lands of MDC supporters. It would seem rather to be a win-win for both the ‘veterans’ and ZANU-PF.
However, a more general and pertinent point is that if you use your army and veterans as tools of repression over decades and to massacre opponents including your revolutionary brothers, it may be difficult for anyone to know whether the army or veterans or other armed gangs etc are eventually pulling the strings, or just working hand in glove etc.
There are differing views in respect of the economic downturn, esp. for many urban Zimbabweans, in respect of 90’s IMF Structural Adjustment Programs, which may or may not have worked through the system if not for the Govt starting to move outside the normal banking system by printing money, running huge budget deficits, and more so exacerbated by Mugabe enthusiastically entering the Second Congo War in 1998.
This 2001 piece is about logging of potential world heritage Congolese rainforest by Mugabe and party cronies:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/aug/26/zimbabwe.jasonburke
Didn’t however find much in depth or much follow-up in respect of the 2005 “clearing” of possible hundreds of thousands of people in urban ghettos and the arresting twenty thousand hawkers in Harare etc, again in electorates which had voted MDC in the previous elections.
That said, this 2007 Prof. Mayo article, aside from it’s pro-Govt position on the land reforms provides an overview of land and agricultural data. I also note again that Prof Mayo doesn’t mention any internal causes of Zimbabwe’s economic slide in the 90’s aside from the stated ‘neo-liberal reforms’:
http://www.aiastrust.org/press-releases-pdf/Zim%20Land%20Reform%20and%20the%20Way%20Forward%20-Mail&Guardian.pdf
And I thought these chapters in a book by the Mayo were very instructive in light of the ‘gardening vs farming’ discussion on this thread:
“In Zimbabwe this debate has been conducted in its most ahistroical and racist form which ascribes the smallness of Communal Area farms (ie. crop plots) to an immutable preference for such “households” plots rather than to the ravages of land alienation and state-led institutional controls since the early 1990’s. That line of argument was based upon the presumed preference of “African” small farms for producing for family subsistence requirements rather than for commercial ends and large scale motives”. (Land Reform Under Structural Adjustment in Zimbabwe -Pages 24-25.)
I did however enjoy this leftwing Zambian Economist’s blog including this post from 2007 in which a few pro-Govt bloggers & one MDC supporter wade through the issues in the comments section – it gets a little more interesting about halfway down when the ‘Anonymous’ MDC supporter pipes up.
http://zambian-economist.blogspot.com/2007/07/musings-on-post-mugabe-zimbabwe.html
I particularly like it because it could be a mirror image of this thread with ‘Mr K’ in the John Tracey role. He posts in the same prolific manner and references the same materials. It’s a v. small world.
As to partickm’s call to arms…..wot again! Personally, I would be looking towards a political rather than military solution. Killing more people never seems like a good way to stop killing people. I think Smith’s and the OZ Govt’s position in trying to get a regional solution is the right one. ZANU-PF still has significant support. A civil war would be a terrible outcome.
WMC was bought by BHP-B about 3 years ago or so, btw.
comment awaiting clearance. thx.
John,
I invite you to re-read my comment. I said that there were many in the google result that were plainly racist. I did not say that the one you linked to was. Additionally, however, the one you linked to did not mention Rockefeller at all.
Jo, Killing people isn’t a “good” way to stop (other people) killing people,
It is the only way.
I’ve got to say this but it is not about Zimbabwe for I have said all I am able too in that regard.
I find the reactions to my recent comments to be as astounding as the kind of irrational dismissal that my comments about the MDC were met with.
My point about Phosphate Hill was it illustrate the nature of global agribusiness and the corporations that control it. I believe I have connected Phosphate Hill to Rockefeller by way of Arvi Parbos involvement in the rockefeller foundations international agricultureal reform network. WMC’s connections to Esso and Exxon are all over the net.
WMC’s connection to the nuclear industry and Hugh Morgan, apart from being a former director of the reserve bank, was part of Howard’s hand picked nuclear club advising him on nuclear power issues, so as well as Arvi Parbo’s international business connections WMC was very well connected into the scheme of international capital above and beyond Rockefeller connections.
But the point I was making which has been ignored and denied is that there is a corporate elite who dominate, not just – but in this case, global agribusiness. The Rockefeller connections are irrelevant consiidering Rockefeller and Gates issue media releases as to their intentions in Africa, it is no conspiracy theory.
The Rockefeller empire is a broad miasma of shareholdings now. In the last few decades they have transformed their once monolithic empire into an opportunist sharemarket strategy of divesification and constant change. Whereas the monolithic Rockefeller of most of last century (who used Bechtel as its engineering company to build the empire) sold oil, now it sells companies. The companies themselves are now the commodities, built at bargain basement rates, subsidised by sycophantic governments then flogged of on the stock exchange to Mum and Dad investors who bear the brunt when it goes wrong (Enron) long after the corporate developers have made their massive profits and run. This is the economic program behind privatisation of the electricity industry at present. Whenit comes toAfrican food business, the Mum and Dad investors will be stung hard if there is a drought or war induced failure of the crop but the Africans will starve. The futures market provides a buffer to the investors but the African farm workers simply die.
The Rockefeller Foundation however is a specific agency. It is the think tank, the evil brain that informs the Miasma of its options and brokers opportunities within the intricate fabric of cross ownership of companies and joint ventures between companies as well as negotiating (making offers that can’t be refused) with governments.
This international corporate network of which Rockefeller is just one of several camps, makes and breaks governments through its own economic strategies and from the enourmous influence members of the network such as Rupert Murdoch have in determining government policy and if they fail to do that they manipulate the perceptions of the electorate to change the government to one more compliant with the aspirations of the corporate elite. What happened to Whitlam?
Those who think the ballot box makes any difference to this network are deluded sheep, fed the bland fodder of the mainstream media and their democratic opinions are just the excrement produced through the digestion of such fodder – and represented at the ballot box.
Some LP readers obviously live in a white affluent fantasy land where all discomforting information is psycholigically resisted, leaving an insulated, insular self perception generalised out to an understanding of the world where corporate sponsored famine, corporate elite dominace of Zimbabwe or Australia or Iraq are just nightmarish figments of someone elses imagination.
Wake up you deluded fools, what you assume as truth is just a program in the matrix.
“Some LP readers obviously live in a white affluent fantasy land where all discomforting information is psycholigically resisted, leaving an insulated, insular self perception generalised out to an understanding of the world where corporate sponsored famine, corporate elite dominace of Zimbabwe or Australia or Iraq are just nightmarish figments of someone elses imagination.
Wake up you deluded fools, what you assume as truth is just a program in the matrix.”
Look down John! What’s that you’re sailing majestically over? Oh noes!!!
SHARK!!1!!
Jo,
Firstly you are wrong in representing the farm invasions as a Mugabe initiative. As I have earlier mentioned he resisted land reform for 17 years but through threat of war he succumbed to the veterans who were occupying farms before long before the laws were put to parliament.
Until war broke out and the veterans began flexing their muscle mugabe was just a pawn of international capital so your various analyses of Mugabe do not challenge an iota anything that I have said.
And you are wrong about Moyo, if you can find the PDF that I had trouble lnking to. He is very critical of Mugabe for pursuning neo-liberal policies and stalling the land reform process. He is however critical of the MDC for the same reasons which, apparently to you, makes him a Mugabe stooge.
And as for subsistance versus profit farming. You will find nothing in what I have written promoting subsistance farming as anything other than a viable fall back option in a famine. I have dared to say that the existing informal economy should be a foundation for rebuilding the econonomy, by which I mean developing prosperous enterprise well above subsistance,
The assumption that African agriculture is forever stuck in ancient modes of production is as racist as the assumption that broadscale farming cannot occur without multinational fertilisers is ecocidal.
And for the first time on this thread I have been offended with your implication that I am part of an international conspiracy to defend Mugabi. Get Fucked!
“Some LP readers obviously live in a white affluent fantasy land where all discomforting information is psycholigically resisted,”
Ah the old ‘psychological resistance’ ploy. Yes, many LP posters ‘psychologically resist’ views they hold to be illogical, inhumane, unintelligible, unrealistic, or immoral. In that ‘resistance’ they’re very similar to most other human beings.
“They said Galileo was wrong too!!” cries Citizen X. Yes they did, but it doesn’t follow that everyone who is judged “wrong” is another Galileo. Sometimes he is just plain wrong.
cheerio
PS: I wonder who ZANU-PF is preferencing in the forthcoming one-candidate ‘election’? Ah, it’s just like old times in the Soviet Union or PRC, or very recent times in Cuba. The election they had to have.
Just looked at Mr. K’s comments.
You are a scumbag Jo, trying to link me to him is a cheap nasty infantile piece of mudslinging.
He has some points that I agree with and some I dont but just because there is a non-contectual confluence on some areas does not make me him.
What this indicates is that there is a boogie man in your head that you have superimposed onto both Mr. K and myself.
The Moyo article is a doc which is probably why I can’t link it but you can find “Land Policy, Poverty Reduction and Public Action in Zimbabwe” from this google page.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&q=Land+Policy%2C+Poverty+Reduction+and+Public+Action+in+Zimbabwe+sam+moyo&btnG=Search
Moyo was one of the brokers of the Lancaster House agreement.
Gee, I must be a bit too close for comfort, John’s gone off like a Catherine Wheel.
Talk about projection – your raves are IMAX size, John.
I’ve sourced mostly black African and/or African based commentators in my travels. It seems that you are totally incapable of comprehending that black Africans hold a range of differing opinions; some uniformed, some very, very informed.
But according to you 55-65% of Zimbabweans who currently support the MDC are all just stooges, fools, sheep & worse … just like us ‘white’ LPer’s…… or indeed anyone who doesn’t agree with you. Nice.
You constantly slide around points, change inferences and avoid the pertinent issues with small, side quibbles like Moyo being critical of Mugabe in the 90’s – and I’m not going to bother going back now to trawl through all of your posts – because you’d just dissemble and slide off yet again.
And apparently my last post has got you all offended, because I pointed to a poster on a Zambian blog, without btw, casting any aspersions on that poster playing a similar role, and now you say you agree with some of his points. FFS!!
(And for latecomers read my last post and compare to some the abuse directed at JT up the thread and make up your own minds as to his sincerity.)
John,
I really now hope that you do finish up posting on this thread. You are incapable of looking at a range of materials and coming to any other opinion than the one you started with, no matter if these materials or sources are universally and bipartisanally accepted as fact.
Considering that you have told me to fcuk off and have called me a scumbag – I’ll respond by saying that you are a paranoid hysteric. And I’d suggest a Big Pharma medication for your condition, unfortunately none exists.
You’re referring to this kind of thinking John:
http://www.infowars.com/?p=2874
Even tho I know you’re an intelligent, thoughtful individual John, you need to understand that there is also a hidden political & monetary agenda behind such so called “truth telling”. I’d take it w/ a pinch of salt.
Indeed, there are political economic chess players, some who have little concern for “the dispensable”, “the pawns”, “the ignorant masses who would tyrannise Democracy if we allowed such a thing to exist w/out our intervention, guiding hand”…& definitely there are influential individuals who have certain corporate, academic, secret society, religious organisation connections in common…& sometimes favours are requested and skills/experience/info is drawn upon in relation to those connections. It’s usually related to BUSINESS. In one way or another. Creating jobs, gathering resources, making a buck to protect yerself in the future or provide nutrition for your PARTY.
Many influential individuals have their own goals & purpose that are realised in such a fashion that they cannot be accused of promoting the aims of any particular FEW…nor can guilt by association be applied to them in the implementation of those ideas/schemes formed elsewhere, or in their minds.
The internet & other tech, educational & social advances over the years has led to another form of economic CHAOS, and corporate re-alignments, alternative alliances, explosion of new media & so on that undermines the theory that specific families/corporations rule & their goals are easily attainable…even said dynasties & monopolies are imploding, fracturing, transforming, adapting to the demands of the increasingly outspoken public/consumers at this very moment.
They are attempting to appropriate & gather intellectual property & put up protection walls at the speed of greed & survival…but competition is becoming fiercer & even the long-trained bodies & propagandised minds of THE RECRUIT…THE INHERITOR…the PRINCE/PRINCESS, CEOs in-waiting are beginning to smell the sweet aroma of dissent…and CHANGE…the NEW WORLD…& soon the old guard will be forced to walk away from the throne/the office…take that long walk…as their guard dogs & guardians & enablers transform or retire or die off and the NEW begins to emerge from the rubble of the old…so much is sprouting already.
This is not the time to get lost in reductionist views & paint ALL w/ the same brush. Best to warn a bit…compare…& then throw out positive ideas to assist the transformation. I’ve read some of yer ideas…& they can work…provided put in the right context & explained in detail…& links provided.
I’m heading back to support for Barack Obama…& even Hillary Clinton. But they know they will only be guides & facilitators on this most interesting of journeys.
An intense examination of the Supreme Court of America (the appointment system), the Monarchies & the various constitutions, bill of rights & reserve banks & other financial institutions across the planet is a MUST. I give you credit for pointing out some of the limitations, suspicious goals & weaknesses of such. But don’t get caught up in a GRAND fiction that is too easily pieced together to create a distorted jigsaw that benefits the constructers, feeds into some of their acute paranoid fantasies, helps for a short time to stop their world from wobbling, and in turn, could possibly lead to another Holocaust-like tragedy as certain individuals grow in the heat of the FEVER like leaders reaching for God’s hand on the mountain tops.
Mugabe MUST stand down. He’s LOST THE PLOT. The bordering African states must assist their neighbours. NOW. The paranoid bully out of control must be taken into custody. He’s had his chances.
Nasking said….
“This is not the time to get lost in reductionist views & paint ALL w/ the same brush. Best to warn a bit…compare…& then throw out positive ideas to assist the transformation. I’ve read some of yer ideas…& they can work…provided put in the right context & explained in detail…& links provided.”
Fair enough,
This is a report I co-authored, a hypothetical vision for land reform in remote Aboriginal communities, touching on economic development but focusing on town planning and modelled on the needs of the Palm Island and Boulia Aboriginal communities in Qld.
http://www.kalkadoon.org/index.php/out-of-the-box-housing-vision/
It just might work for landless Africans too.
It was written in response to a previous report for the Greens on the Palm Island Housing crisis.
http://www.kalkadoon.org/index.php/palm-island-housing-report/
I bet there are very similar problems in the communal areas in Zimbabwe, as with the ex Bantu stands in South Africa, to those faced by remote Aboriginal communities and those still living on the colonial reserves.
Then there is this sort of stuff regarding Africa, a much better use of foreign research than the Rockefeller mode.
http://www.igf-online.org/index.php?id=179
I see it as a transitional phase to larger scale development but within the same ecological and self sufficient frameworks. This model is based on minimal resources so as to be immediately applicable but such a program could immediately go to large scale if it operated on fertile land and had a fraction of the investment that agribusiness requires. Upmarket versions of the same thing are very trendy on the Australian property market as I suspect elsewhere so there is much innovation occuring.
I don’t think this is fair to him. I haven’t time to read the extensive argument that proceeded since I stopped taking part in it but John has participated in it with courtesy and care for his assertions as far as I’ve seen.
.
I think this oppressed/oppressor dichotomy is over-simplistic and John is trying to show us that the simple solution of democracy is not such an easy answer. Neither is simply knocking out Mugabe.
.
A cursory look at the history of Latin American politics will show that commercial interests, backed up by the force of foreign governments, will subvert the self-rule of people. I’d argue that the depsing of Arbenz by the CIA in the interests of United Fruit probably persuaded Castro to throw his lot in with the Sovs.
.
Similarly, as John puts it, there’s a political tug of war between Mugabe’s Stalinist counter-revolution and an opposition that may get into bed with commercial interests at the expense of the people in general. This is a standard dichotomy that has existed since the second World War. It’s not a simply matter of choosing sides. Both sides may be rotten.
.
I personally think that the world would be a much better place if governments were properly answerable to a literate and materially secure citizenry. The standard model for this is liberal-democracy along the American, Westminister or European models. There could be others but these tend to work.
.
However as John has said, in Africa there is a political system based on tribal and clanned affilliation which has been exploited by imperialism along the divide and rule principle. This makes it complicated.
Well said, Adrien.
It’s not just the third world. Australia’s response to climate change is pathetic despite clear science providing evidence for the need for urgent action. Yet at Bali Australia backed the US in obstructing moves forward on such things as emission targets. Why is this? What are the factors that Rudd and Wong take into account when they essentially eliminate the possiblity of timely, adequateand appropriate responses?
In terms of the third world, at Bali Australia backed the US to side-line and dismiss the perspectives of the third world adhering to the model of rich intervention into the poor nations by way of the world bank – in total defiance of the demands of the third world to set their own agenda independent of the world bank including being able to receive carbon credit on the allegedly open market instead of recieving aid designed, managed and funded through the world bank, allowing the corporations of the green revolution to recieve the carbon credits.
Why does Australia take this approach to “helping” the poor countries adapt to climate change? I remember no public debate that could in anyway give a mandate to such a significant policy. Why do they do it?
Could it have anything to do with the mining and energy industries or is this just paranoia too?
Was the intervention into East Timor about democracy and human rights or about the 80% share of the sunrise oil and gas fields that Australian backed multinational corporations have stolen and continue to steal from the East Timorise depriving them of the necessary funds for independent reconstruction and maintaining dependence on international investment and loans?
and there’s more!
please consider…..
The system of fractional reserve banking allows the US FEd reserve to lend out ten times as much money as it has in reserve. I believe the Australian reserve bank (remember the Hugh Morgan connection) can lend out 15 or 16 times the reserve. Once the reserve bank lends the money too other banks they can too lend 10 or 15- 16 thimes the amount borrowed from the reserve. So, the banks who are major shareholders in engineering companies, mining companies, agricultural companies etc. can print money from nothing to lend to themselves to invest in these third world programs that cause so much permanent disaster in echange for short term investor returns and absolutely massive profits for the banks who not only get the profits from their various investments but also from the massive interest extracted to pay for the loans that didn’t cost them one cent to provide.
and you don’t think the system is rigged?
and,
the massive price of housing in Australia is a direct response of fractional reserve banking that has oversupplied loans to a point without ceiling well beyond any natural limits in a real free market.
Of course the reserve bank is “independent” – remember Morgan of WMC and consider the current board http://www.rba.gov.au/AboutTheRBA/rba_board.html#members
and see how independent the reserve bank is, this non elected but most powerful organisation in Australia.
They care little for homelessness and the working poor, their only concern is banking and investment profit and they can’t be voted out in a democratic election.
They, not the government set Australia’s monetary policy. These unelected board members of the most powerful entity in Australia set the rules of their own games and in poor old Kevin’s own words there is nothing he can do about it.
Isn’t democracy wonderful that we can vote for someone like Kevin.
and,
The A.L.P. that party that used to be socialist but they wiped it from the constitution, then they tended to be leftist but today it is only the left faction who is left that is really left, (but everyone agrees that Gough went too far), it is this bastion of the workers who did it, just as they expanded the uranium industry which despite trying hard Fraser never managed to do.
Why would a party for working families do such a thing as give the peoples bank to a bunch of high flying capitalists to do what they want with without strings?, especially in the face of such strong union and grass roots membership resistance not disimilar to what is occuring in NSW regarding privatisnig electricity right now.
Why is NSW cabinet defying its own caucus and party and electoral mandate to privatise energy?
Democracy sure works in mysterious ways.
Holy shit, fractional reserve. This is definitely the end. What a ride though!
BBB
BBB: We should give it some kind of title. I propose Birdwin’s Law.
Come on – let me at the FRB stuff. I dare you.
http://ozrisk.net/2007/10/05/what-is-money/
I double dare you…
Thnx for the links John. Hopefully some polies & their advisors took a look. And lobby groups. And philanthropists.
Yes, well said Adrien.
I also checked out your link too Andrew…interesting.
Mulling it all over.
I have to say, the Reserve Bank look at a glance, & based on their connections, to be the enablers of the Corporate Aristocracy…some are the Corporate Aristocracy.
Still, at least we haven’t seen rate rises for 3 mths…& Henry is helping wombats…;)
A cracker thread Kim. Have a good hol. Come back rejuvenated & fearless as ever.
A zimbabwe perspective of the sort of thing I am talking about….
“Land reforms threatened by a ‘reformist government’”
http://www.newzimbabwe.com/pages/opinion318.18126.html
I encourage readers to look around the other news and opinion on this site to get a glimpse of Zimbabwe not represented in the Australian media.
John,
Just a quick point on FRB. I am happy to go into this in more depth on my own blog but it is definately OT here.
It is just a part of any bank’s operations – A bank takes deposits. It lends out some of those deposited funds. Hey presto – it is doing fractional reserve as the reserves are going to be fractional if a bank lends some out. No conspiracy there, just normal business. If you want to get worked up about it I am happy to oblige – but it is not a part of any thread on Zim. Go to my site (the piece I linked to) and feel free to continue it there.
jo wrote – “It seems that you are totally incapable of comprehending that black Africans hold a range of differing opinions; some uniformed, …….
Yes, it’s the UNIFORMED in Zimbabwe we need to be worried about, Army & militia thugs
John please don’t mention fractional reserve. Thanks to Graeme Bird I have a condition that sends me into seizure whenever I hear the phrase.