Greetings, haven't seen this discussed here lately (though I've not followed the discussions here as much in the last few days), so perhaps the situation in Zimbabwe has been discussed and I've missed it. The following was taken from my blog linked in my signature from a post and goes as follows:
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"How can you have an election where people are killed and hacked to death as the sun goes down?" Mr. Khumalo asked. "How can you have an election where the leader of one party is not even allowed to conduct rallies?"
And some people want to still call Mugabe a "liberator", want to blame "The West" or America, or "the British", for "putting Mugabe in the position where he's in, where he's forced to do the things that he does because he's being pushed up against a wall". "Because the opposition is just a tool of the West anyway". So their supporters deserve to be killed? The opposition leaders deserve to be thrown in jail on trumped up charges of *gasp* "treason? All because Mugabe *used to be* some kind of liberator? Because he said some things about "pan-Africanism", because he said some things against "the evil West"?
Nonetheless, Zimbabwe's information minister, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, told The Associated Press that the runoff would go forward on Friday despite Mr. Tsvangirai's departure from the race.
"The Constitution does not say that if somebody drops out or decides to chicken out the runoff will not be held," Mr. Ndlovu said.
Chickening out? Chickening out!? Are you really serious!? I heard "this good minister" say just about the same thing this morning on "the evil BBC", as I was trying to get back to sleep after taking Chloe out, and I was truly disgusted! Mugabe's government is responsible for ruining the country (though they blame it on the West), and the oppression of his own people (and I don't see any outside "Western" hand in that), and even if that is the case, even if you want to say that "outside forces" still have control of Zimbabwe, it's not these people who cut off food aid to their own people by forcing aid agencies to stop their work and why? because (oh they're tools of the west, and there goes that excuse again), it's not these people that are preventing people from rallying and supporting the candidate of their choice.
It's not anyone from "the outside" that is using every tactic in the book to perpetuate themselves in power and saying things like "only God can make me give up power" or "the bullet is mightier than a ball point pin".
Give me a break! How can we, for example, spend days, write volumes, criticizing Yahya Jammeh (and others), yet still insist on holding up Mugabe as a "pillar of virtue", albeit with statements like (well he's done some things that are wrong". And if anyone dares to cite any of these "things" we're told we are just a "shameless tool of the west".
Until we, as Africans, Muslims, white people, Americans, whatever, start calling a spade a spade, start speaking the truth "even if it's against our own selves", even if it's against so-called leaders that we revere as "pan-Africanists" or as "someone who stood up to the West", or as "liberators" or whatever, we're not going to get anywhere. Because many of these so-called "liberators" are not liberators anymore, and have turned out to be worse for their own people than any person, group, corporation, or entity from "The West".
I've asked this question before and I'll ask it again, what separates Mugabe from Jammeh? Is it that Mugabe is educated and Jammeh is not? Is it that Mugabe has fought a war of liberation from colonization, and Jammeh has not? What other differences are there?
If we're just going to go on the first two differences, I'd say that Mugabe is *worse* than Jammeh, because he should know better, firstly because he's educated (and Jammeh, well, as far as we know barely got through high school), and secondly because Mugabe would know what it's like to be oppressed by another group of people and we'd like to think that he'd not want the same to befall his own people, once he won his struggle for liberation.
Sadly, from all indications that I can gather, this has not been the case. In fact, he's been in power longer than Jammeh, and has engaged in worse acts of oppression than Jammeh.
Yet the same people who will go on and on about Jammeh, will be some of the same who will say things like "oh I know you were going to bring that up", when you bring up certain campaigns of opression, and then have the gall to ask why these happened, what were the reasons for these campaigns, and the best answer you get is something along the lines of "oh Mugabe was just trying to root out evil Western influence from his country".
It seems that if Jammeh were smart, he'd go back to school, get a degree, wax poetic about Pan-Africanism, evil white people and the West, and perhaps he might curry more favor with some people. Although unfortunately, there is nothing to "liberate" the Gambia from except Jammeh himself. So he doesn't have a "liberation struggle" to fight.
In my book, right is right, wrong is wrong, oppression is oppression, etc., and on and on and on, and just because you got some education, just because you fight a war of liberation, just because you "stand up to the powers-that-be" whoever they are, or whoever you want them to be, these things don't absolve you of any of this.
If you kill your own people, ruin the country such that inflation is, well, gastronomical, if you prevent the people from expressing their true political will by force, if you prevent the people who oppose you from rallying and well, voting against you and your policies, and when you continue to do things to perpetuate yourself in power, then imho, that makes any liberation struggle you ever fought, any good you may have done or stood up for in the past, any education you got, null and void!
I'm just tired of people continually feeling the need to praise tyrants, criminals, corporate thugs, etc., as some sort of "heroes", just because they may have done some good in the past. And lately the situation in Zimbabwe and watching the antics of Mugabe and his government has just really gotten under my skin (in much the same way that watching Jammeh and the APRC government does). And I just felt the need to speak on it. And there is my two cents for the week, or perhaps the month, who knows.
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Ginny
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