Another thing to remember is if Mugabe is outed his henchmen would be severely punished or killed....its going to take something extreme for Mugabe to relinquish power a whole of personnel is dependent on Mugabe staying in power..this would take more than giving bribes to a few top honchos here and there....considering being part of the Ruling Party they have to relinquish power to the Oppostion its not like a Military take over..where they are one and the same unit

K - and believe me the west know the symptoms. They simply look on licking their lips saying 'here we go again'.

Astmartins

Mugabe took the farms and we all applauded.

Until we saw what happened. Zim does not have the mineral wealth of it's neighbours (well gold and asbestos aside). Zimbabwe's main wealth was it's farms and agriculture, cotton and tobacco mostly but you get the idea.

As Africans we all agreed that the situation of whites holding onto those farms after independence was intolerable. We all welcomed land reform and change. Done properley, ie putting black farmers there and training africans with knowhow to run things, would have made Mugabe a champion forever.

That's not what happened. Commercial farms were turned into homesteads. A massive farm of such and such dimensions was turned into family plots for a few thousand for example. Sounds good. But what that means is that land which would have fed 10s of 1000s now feeds a few familys. Whatever income the gov was taking in taxes and duty from exports of produce or just domestic trade vanished quickly (when you multiply that situation across a nation).

Some of the best land and farms went to ministers, generals and cronies... turned in to golf resorts and palaces. Lots of chinese money has gone here. Again negating the production of food and economy. Machinery confiscated from the farmers was sold by those who claimed the land because they didn't know how to use it. Harvesters for example, rusted and rotted away or where snapped up by clever south africans.

Zanu then swept up all the entreprenuers and street traders under the guise of calling them criminals (fruit & veg sellers, craftsmen etc) and smashed their homes. Relocatting them to seized land in the bush where they didn't know what they where doing. They starved and suffered.

All the while ministers where taking money out and building palaces.

THAT is how an economy failed. How inflation became a meaningless term. What was the original solution from the mastermind government to the problem of inflation? Oh we'll just chop off some zeros from the notes and it will slow down. WTF!! Lets think of some other good ideas they had... price fixing in shops. Okay so now the shops have their prices fixed but the suppliers didn't so now the shops can't afford to restock and they're all empty.


And why would I mention Barclays? Barclays are Zanu friends.

Also, it's fine to go on about the hypocrisy of the west but have you no words for the hyporcrisy of Africans? Where did all the white farmers go? To South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia and Mozambique. Funnily enough, all leaders of these nations cheered Mugabe on as he sent them his farmers. Very amusing.

All good to talk about western interests but clever westerners are cleaning up NOW. Roman Abramhovic for example has just bought a lot of prime estate from the gov in zimbabwe. What on earth he plans to do is anybodys guess. Realpolitik

You hit the nail on the head, that is why all this talk of Mugabe is misleading...if he gets killed you still have the people who proped him up..and they aint gonna roll over and take up the you know where?

Lost touch with reality? Well rumours said he still lays a plate at dinner for Nkomo and speaks to his ghost but that's just sillyness.


K, for years now the west has been Mugabe's friend not Morgans. Everytime somebody in the west talks tough about Mugabe or criticises him, it goes into his next speech and he uses that to secure his own power (look how they're all out to get me). For YEARS he's been doing that skillfully. Until recently, the more they attacked him, the more brutal they named him, the more his African neighbour leaders backed him. Only now it looks like his African neighbours are growing bored of the game.

By the same token, whenever the west talked UP Morgan they destroyed him in Zim. Any praise you recieve in the west, the Herald immediately makes into treachery back home. Talk about him being in the pockets of white investors.... please explain how that makes him different to any other african at the moment? Incog already mentioned Barclays and Zanu... I'll throw in China for clarity. It's not very nice to say out loud but they're ALL bought.

This is one of those small things I was on about. You can't see that from the west. Which is why moaning about western bias is the media, or which celeb/politician said what... is irrelevent for people in Zim. It plays completly differently.

Well they said as much. The leader of the army came out and said that there would be bloodshed if Mugabe was beaten in an election and his troops would lead it.

Watcher - wasn't me but all good. Is it a case of where does this all meet in the middle as there is enough to say everybody is playing their part but at the end of the day who is suffering.

Mugabe seems to have a bias towards a shared government, would you consider this middle ground enough?

Actually i completely agree....I heard a zimbabwean state that all that matters is the now and when and how we eat.. She said that until the basics are sorted..Zimbabwe is not in a position to make an informed choice....a starving man don't care about the vote, he cares about his belly and that of his family..was the point she was making..which isthe same point you are making all talk of bias, whitety and morgan is irrelivant until this shit is stablised..

K - some would argue that's precisely what sanction are put in place for and if they were put in place after farmland was taken back did Mugabe take that into consideration when executing his masterplan.

Me no understandy


I admit to knowing very little about the Zim situation...only surface stuff.Don't really know what's going down on the ground.

I tell you what I do know,or think I know....

I know that Zim was once called "The Bread-Basket" of Africa coz it was so prosperous etc...etc...

I have a vague understanding of the land re-distribution issues,the scant bits of info ive managed to absorb along the way tell me that the land distribution was a good and right thing but the people who the land was given to weren't trained up.


Mugabe...........now forgive me for this because I am coming from a place of relative ignorance on this one......I don't understand all the minutae of his regime, but I can't help but have a grudging admiration for his balls of steel!

Your post TW has gone some way to shed some light on this issue for me but what id love is if someone would...especially someone like TW who has roots there..would bullet point(in reaaaaaal simple terms) the major issues of Zim or point me in the direction of some books which will help me understand further.


By the way did you see the news today where one of Mugabe's security almost beat up one of ITN's reporters at the AU.

Incognito..if you look at the history of land reform..you will note that there was no 'masterplan' the war veterans took the law into their own hands, and at first Mugabe tried to beat them back.. but then took the populist line when it threaten his position...Since then he has been playing it like he was his idea it wasn't...

There is no plan..thats why the whole thing is an almighty mess..