Mugabe forced out—finally
This news is cause for celebration:
Robert Mugabe resigned as Zimbabwe’s president on Tuesday a week after the army and his former political allies moved against him, ending four decades of rule by a man who turned from independence hero to archetypal strongman…
The 93-year-old had clung on for a week after an army takeover and expulsion from his own ruling ZANU-PF party, but resigned shortly after parliament began an impeachment process seen as the only legal way to force him out.
Wild celebrations broke out at a joint sitting of parliament when Speaker Jacob Mudenda announced Mugabe’s resignation and suspended the impeachment procedure.
People danced and car horns blared on the streets of Harare at news that the era of Mugabe — who has led Zimbabwe since independence in 1980 — was finally over.
Mugabe’s trajectory was (sadly) not unusual for countries in Africa, or other third-world countries around the globe. A hero of independence turns into a tyrant, and a long-lived, well-ensconsed tyrant at that. Almost forty years of it for Mugabe and Zimbabwe (which was once Rhodesia—which I’ve written about here).
From a NY Times article quoted in that earlier post (2010) of mine:
When the country changed from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, we were very excited,” one man, Kizita, told me in a village of mud-walled huts near this town in western Zimbabwe. “But we didn’t realize the ones we chased away were better and the ones we put in power would oppress us.”
“It would have been better if whites had continued to rule because the money would have continued to come,” added a neighbor, a 58-year-old farmer named Isaac. “It was better under Rhodesia. Then we could get jobs. Things were cheaper in stores. Now we have no money, no food.”
Over and over, I cringed as I heard Africans wax nostalgic about a nasty, oppressive regime run by a tiny white elite. Black Zimbabweans responded that at least that regime was more competent than today’s nasty, oppressive regime run by the tiny black elite that surrounds Mr. Mugabe.
And quoted in that same 2010 post of mine was this article that appeared in the Telegraph on the death of Ian Smith in 2007:
Although the first 20 years of Mugabe’s rule saw a slow, somewhat even-paced decline, the calamitous collapse has been achieved in little more than half a decade, an extraordinary feat of self-destruction when one considers that it took more than a century for Ian Smith’s white antecedents to carve a modern, functioning, European-style society out of raw African bushveld.
But that has been the story of post-colonial Africa and, although this week’s obituaries will largely dismiss Smith as a colonial caricature, a novelty politician from another age, if you were to go to Harare today and ask ordinary black Zimbabweans who they would rather have as their leader – Smith or Mugabe – the answer would be almost unanimous. And it would not be Mugabe.
Well, now Zimbabwe has a chance—perhaps, anyway—to elect someone who is better than either or both. I wish the people of Zinbabwe well, but the prospects for a country with such a dismal history don’t look bright. Will the somber words of one of the men interviewed in that NY Times article repeat themselves: “the ones we chased away were better and the ones we put in power would oppress us”?
I guess they could use some white supremacy.
Mr. Frank:
Some balance would have been nice.
I beg to disagree. That part of Africa has exactly zero chance. It is far too broken.
But I admire the hope that springs eternal….
From the scenes I watched on TV the jubilation is unanimous and unchallenged. The hopes for better future are insanely high. “Poor souls, – I mused. – A big disenchantment awaits them.” In Russia, after fall of Communism lots of people were just so hopeful and nobody could imagine that dictatorship will return in almost intact form. They can’t grasp how wretched they really are after all these decades of tyrannical rule, and that their best hope would be a more benevolent tyranny.
“Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss”
Well, now Zimbabwe has a chance–perhaps, anyway–to elect someone who is better than either or both. I wish the people of Zimbabwe well, but the prospects for a country with such a dismal history don’t look bright. Will the somber words of one of the men interviewed in that NY Times article repeat themselves: “the ones we chased away were better and the ones we put in power would oppress us”?
* * *
Being better than Mugabe’s thugs is not a high bar.
Power always corrupts; it helps if the powerful start with a desire for more liberty and freedom, but it is no sinecure.
The takeway quote is IMO the one about competence and economics: “It was better under Rhodesia. Then we could get jobs. Things were cheaper in stores. Now we have no money, no food.”
This is really what most people care about, not the machinations in the upper-ranks.
Some Russians were nostalgic for Stalin after the chaos of the USSR dissolution.*
As Venezuela proved, “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation” but “at some point you run out of other people’s money.”
“the calamitous collapse has been achieved in little more than half a decade, an extraordinary feat of self-destruction when one considers that it took more than a century for Ian Smith’s white antecedents to carve a modern, functioning, European-style society out of raw African bushveld.”
The experience of American Democrat cities who also “kicked out the oppressors” without a noticeable improvement in their lives might count as another cautionary tale, although not yet in the same dire straits.
Perhaps a less-violent revolution without the complete ouster of the European settlers, or none at all, might have seen a gradual sharing of power as the Africans’ prosperity improved their education and skills enough to make their way upward within the Rhodesian structure.
We will never know if that would have happened, in Zimbabwe or other post-colonial countries,
*(I do not count the recent laudatory effulgence of the US media and academia; they have a leftist agenda to promote and didn’t live under Communism in action.)
(I am not an African expert, this is just an observer’s response to the news. I wish Zimbabwe well, and hope they can find someone who will shepherd them through this transition, but the history of the coup leaders as former revolutionaries does not give me a lot of hope.)
Boy, but print that same opinion in a scholarly publication and watch your career get threatened.
Really…Just ask Bruce Gilley of Portland State University.
SS, DD.
Or more politely put by John Guilfoyle, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
It’s still ZANU-PF. For almost forty years, they were fine with Mugabe. It’s not going to get any better…
Forget it Jake, its Zimbabwe.
I don’t hold out much hope. I was in Zaire, South Africa and Rhodesia in the early 1970s. Every time the blacks took over in an African country things got worse. The blacks were told of course that once the evil white colonial exploiters were gone then things would just be wonderful. Never happened. I think the IQ of black Africans has a lot to do with the inability to run a modern society.
It’s the knowledge that is missing. Not because there aren’t intelligent people in Zimbabwe or many other African countries. They don’t know that private property rights are the key to humans being willing to work hard to improve their property. They don’t know that the crops must be planted just so, that they must be weeded regualarly, that the farm animals must be constantly treated for ticks/parasites, that the harvest must be done properly so it can bring the best price at market, and much more. A few black Rhodesians might have been interested in learning these things, but they never had any dream of buying their own place. They could live a decent life working for the white farmers, so why would they want to learn how to manage a farm. When the white farmers were run off, the know how was lost.
Same thing with their mines. I used to own shares in a copper mining company called Rhodesian Selection Trust. It was a going concern. It paid big dividends and was investment grade until the war began in 1964, at which time the investment became more and more speculative. I sold my shares because of that and it was a good move. The mines are barely operating today. With inept management and corrupt government, there is no capital coming into the country and little production of anything saleable.
What would change things for Zimbabwe? A new, reasonably honest democratic government with a constitution that has private property protected by courts as a major feature. This new government would invite outside capital to invest in their farms and mines. They would ask that immigrant farmers and miners train some Zimbabweans to manage these enterprises with the goal that eventually black Zimbabweans could be fully qualified and able to own and manage the country’s economic assets.
As long as the politicians there dream of Marxism, it isn’t going to happen. Breaks my heart.
We are still blessed, 240 years on, by our founders blessings of our Constitution, law and heritage. The people of Zimbabwe are inherently no different than us, we just have the good fortune of living in the shadow still of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and all the other founders, whose unique gift is our legacy.
How long that ripple will echo I wonder daily.
JJ above has, as I do, actual experience in Zimabawe and his analysis is fine by me. I would add that to understand politics in Zimbabwe you have to understand that Mugabe and ZANUPF are Chinese clients and have been from the beginning. Even worse China bailed Mugabe out with the result that the country is a de facto Chinese colony. (Much as Cambodia is a de facto Vietnamese colony – the Vietnamese army is still there.) So even though being rid of Mugabe is great news, the freedom of the government to do things like adopt Western style property rights is severely limited by what China is willing to let them do. The people themselves are wonderful and are quite upfront about their disappointment with the regime. One of my favorite memories of Zimbabwe was from a sleepy Sunday afternoon on a quiet street in Bulawayo. As Black three youths approached me wearing the latest style hip hop type attire I realized that the street was otherwise empty and I was quite conspicuously alone. As they drew near they sang out in unison: “Good afternoon, sir!! in the best British school boy style.
correction….As three Black youths…..
Run off all the white folks and you get Haiti.
China is and has been making a major financial move into black Africa. The Chinese are not stupid. They are buying major natural resources for petty amounts.
Where does cobalt, an important metal for high-strength steel alloys (think military), come from, for example?
I am increasingly convinced by African and African-American and Haitian history that blacks cannot succeed with democratic governance. They require rulers aka chiefs. It has always been thus, whether in Nairobi or Sudan or Detroit or East St. Louis or…you name it.
Zimbabwe is not “Rhodesia”, Neo and the NYT please note. It is the former Southern Rhodesia, and Zambia is the former Northern Rhodesia. Which did Ian Smith govern as prime minister?
by our founders blessings of our Constitution, law and heritage.
Those blessings didn’t come from tradition or human founding fathers.
They require rulers aka chiefs.
So do Westerners and Americans.
It is pretty clear that I do not agree with bdh as to inherent difference yay or nay.
Frog, Ian Smith governed Southern Rhodesia. It was not an official apartheid government as in South Africa, but the black Africans were not much represented in government and the schools were segregated. However, blacks who worked on the farms had a decent life as far as things went in Africa those days.
The black Africans customs from time immemorial are tribal. They have little concept of private property and the responsibility that goes with it. To establish the institutions and customs we have would require a couple of generations of focused training and development.
I agree that the Chinese have their eyes on Zimbabwe and other African countries with valuable mineral and farm resources. The question is whether they can do any better job than the Europeans in developing these countries. We’ll see.
America and Jimmy Carter, helped put Rhodesia into international collapse and thus created Zimbabwe. Then it was sold to the Chinese.
Very similar pattern to the Clintons selling the Chinese missile secrets.
Americans create the problem, they redistribute power to fix the problem, and then they blame it on Republicans, patriots, right wing militia, when it goes FUBAR or pear shaped.
Africa has no chance of getting out of slavery so long as Islam, the elohim, American Superpower backing the Deep State, and the Russian/Chinese conglomeration of human and elohim rulers.
Not even the USA stands a chance against the powers that be… how does one expect third world primitives to get out. Qaddafi was going to create a gold bank, a currency based on gold itself. Look what NATO and the US did to him as a result. Africans better keep in line or else.