If Only Mugabe Were White

[Mugu]

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, nytimes.com

Patson Chipiro, a democracy activist, wasn’t home when Robert Mugabe’s thugs showed up looking for him. So they grabbed his wife, Dadirai, and tormented her by chopping off one of her hands and both of her feet. Finally, they threw her into a hut, locked the door and burned it to the ground.

That has been the pattern lately: with opposition figures in hiding, Mr. Mugabe’s goons kill loved ones to send a message of intimidation. Even the wife of the mayor-elect of Harare, the capital, was kidnapped and beaten to death.

When the white supremacist regime of Ian Smith oppressed Zimbabweans in the 1970s, African countries rallied against it. Eventually, even the white racist government in South Africa demanded change and threatened to cut off electricity supplies if it didn’t happen.

Yet South African President Thabo Mbeki continues to make excuses for Mr. Mugabe — who is more brutal than Ian Smith ever was — out of misplaced deference for a common history in the liberation struggle. Zimbabweans suffered so much for so many decades from white racism that the last thing they need is excuses for Mr. Mugabe’s brutality because of his skin color.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/opinion/29kristof.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin">Complete article

[Skittles]

1. that article needs a GRAPHIC warning

:(

[rpannier]

2. Lot of truth in that article

Thanks for sharing

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

3. I have a problem with this statement

When the white supremacist regime of Ian Smith oppressed Zimbabweans in the 1970s, African countries rallied against it. Eventually, even the white racist government in South Africa demanded change and threatened to cut off electricity supplies if it didn’t happen.

Apartheid South Africa couldn't have cared less about the racial issues in Rhodesia, the statement makes them sound almost principled. It was a matter of the Afrikaner nationalists not being prepared to increase the international pressure on themselves to support the Anglo Rhodesians. Apartheid after all largely came out of the conservative Afrikaner backlash against Anglos in South Africa.

Ian Smith himself was more of a paternalist than a racist - although some of the Afrikaner transplants in his government were pretty hardcore. The man was really just a fucking ignorant peasant who never lost the delusions that great forces were going to come to bear to save Rhodesia.