“If my people want me to go, I go,” says Mugabe. The ruthless dictator does not even acknowledge that he is using brute force to stay in power.
What I find really disappointing is the way the West has failed to flex their economic muscle and really turn the screw on the regime. The targeted sanctions have hardly affected the regime. Indeed Mugabe has used the sanction as the excuse for the country’s economic melt down and to justify further political repression. The sanctions can and should have been fine tuned so that they had some effect on the dictator and his cronies. For ten years now there has been no effort to focus the sanctions.
By letting the token sanctions drag on for ten years the West is actually punishing the ordinary Zimbabweans whose lives the regime has turned into a hell-on-earth. I am particularly disappointed with President Barack Obama.
All Africa wanted from President Obama is to be treat us as humans worthy of all the human rights and dignity the rest of the world enjoy and take for granted. For some one with even one drop of black blood in their veins; that would not have been too much to ask!
So far the West has, at best, patronised Africa. For example, it is normal for the West to cheer and applaud an African election in which there was vote rigging and violent even when hundreds of innocent people were murdered. Of course the same Westerners would be up in arms if there was so much as a whiff of cheating in their own country. The yard stick the West use to measuring Africa’s democratic credentials and the worthy of an African’s life is but a few inches long!
Mugabe has become even more repressive than he was in 2001 when the targeted sanctions were imposed by President Bush. Instead of the West turning the screw on the regime to reflect this; they have done nothing. President Obama’s Administration is even considering softening the sanction! The dictator turned the whole nation up side down in 2008; destroying property, beating, raping and over 500 Zimbabweans were murdered and no one has ever been arrested for all this. This was all done to force people to vote for him. What else does Mugabe have to do, how many more murders to finally convince the Americans that he is a tyrant?
For all the sweet nothings President Obama has done for Africa: Africa would have been better off if he did not have a single drop of black blood in his veins!
2 comments:
@ Mariko Jones and Alex Nhando
“I do not think even Mugabe would want to admit that killing 500 voters is all part and parcel of electioneering in a free and democratic society. Perhaps you, Fungayi, would care to answer that.” You say. Well you are wrong.
Whilst Mugabe has never answered your question directly; he has certainly done so indirectly. By saying “if my people want me to go, I go." What the dictator was saying is the Zimbabwe electorate were not coerced to vote for him. The few occasions he has acknowledge that there had been violence he was quick to mention that Zanu PF supporters as well as MDC supporters were involved. He conveniently forget to mention that MDC supporters at the receiving end of the violence in 90% plus of the cases, that Zanu PF supporters involve in the violence included the Police, Army and CIO, that senior Zanu PF officials were involved in instigating the violence including Mugabe himself, etc.
Fungayi’s answer was more direct but not much different from what Mugabe himself would have said; he denies that anything untoward ever happened. “I can't see any overwhelming evidence that anyone was forced to vote for a particular candidate except your claims,” he says.
People like Mugabe and Fungayi are not moved by the tragic human suffering they have caused in Zimbabwe after the decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption and ruthless oppression by the Mugabe regime. On the economy the regime found it easier to blame the sanction for the economic melt down although the Zimbabwe economy was already on its knees by 2001 when the sanctions were imposed.
As for the political repression including murders the dictator and his thugs are as indifferent as if they had step of some ants. Indeed anyone who dares threaten Mugabe and Zanu PF’s hold on power may as well be an ant.
It falls on people like you gentlemen to remind dictators like Mugabe, his cronies and acolytes that every Zimbabwean is entitle to all the basic human rights and freedoms including the right to have a meaningful say in the governance of the country and the right to life!
@ Mariko Jones
I really do not think I am judging President Obama too harshly by saying Africa would have been better off if he did not have any black African blood in his veins. A lot was expected of him and, sadly, he has delivered nothing!
Like most other African across this continent Zimbabweans had expected independence to bring freedom, human dignity and economic prosperity. After generations of white colonial exploitation and oppression the people had high hopes that their lives would be better. So for them to now find they are be treated by the fellow blacks worse than the whites ever treated them. The cold indifference of Mugabe and his fellow African leaders to the tragic suffering and serious human rights violations right across Africa is shocking.
People are more disappointed with Mugabe than they would have been if Smith had betrayed them because Mugabe is a follow traveller in white colonial oppression.
The West has used a yard-stick to measure the value of Africans’ lives that is a few inches long. The Chinese and Russians’ yard-stick is even shorter. Still people are disappointed with the West that with communist east because the later have used the one-inch long yard-stick to value the lives of their own people. The West, on the other hand have used the full imperial yard, every inch of it, to measure the democratic rights and lives of their citizens.
As for President Obama Africa expected more from him as a leader of the most powerful democracy in the world and a double dose since he is black and therefore understand well what has been holding back Africa.
Very soon it will be two years since Obama entered the White House. Has he made an difference in the push for good governance in Africa – without which nothing will ever be achieved? The answer is an emphatic NO!
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