FREEDOM FOR ZIMBABWE

AFRICA'S HITLER MUST GO NOW!

(23 April 2004)

Last Christmas I  lost my own brother to the beginnings of what looks like the eventual Holocaust of  Zimbabwe's free thinkers and lovers of freedom, I am adding my voice to ever increasing demands for the demise of the devil incarnate Robert Gabriel Mugabe.It is now 2  years since the 2002 elections and there is still no end to the killings.The world continued to watch with measured interest this past Christmas as Mugabe's minions continued with their usual murder and pillage as Bob's purveyors of terror.The MDC's convention in Harare cost a lot of lives, the lives of Zimbabweans who just want their Zimbabwe back.At the moment , as our Hitler and Eva Braun sit in  comfort at State House, comfort provided by terror, I hope that someone somewhere is preparing for Robert Gabriel Mugabe's sudden and brutal death. No more politics.Shoot the President-Then we can party like we did in April 1980!

Can Democracy bring about regime change in Zimbabwe?

19 May 2004

Having grown up in the 80s in Zimbabwe when Robert Mugabe was an angelic statesman and the Apartheid regime south of the border was every African’s bête noir, I still find it hard to accept the dire state Zimbabwe is in today.

Typical of post colonial African politics, the face of the so called enemy has changed - it is no longer baaskap (the rule by Whites of non Whites), but rather the systematic subjugation and oppression of a nation by its own messiahs. Behold, the revolutionary socialist has become an all consuming, all demanding tyrant. Only in African politics is this transformation inevitable. Mugabe and ZANU-PF have crippled a once stable country and made us the sick man of Africa.

The state of the opposition in Zimbabwe

The Zimbabwean body politic is at war with the state, the opposition does not need manifestos to attract members. I joined because the MDC is the only viable opposition to the despot in Harare. Fortunately, the policies of the party are congruent with my needs as a freedom seeking Zimbabwean. The MDC is a good opposition party. The war we are fighting, to bring about Democratic change, is really a war of attrition and the favourite to win that war is Mugabe with his state machinery that will eventually wear down the toughest of opposition. Although we are united by the common goal of regime change, we are still really just a melange of very diverse ideologies. There are those who believe in taking part in the democratic process as it is and then are those amongst us who feel that the democratic process in Zimbabwe is a travesty and the longer we try to play along, then the more we will be worn down by the state’s resilience.

Mugabe is well aware that given time, our differences will come to the fore and we as party members will perhaps not see eye to eye with our comrades on a number of levels, due to a lack of shared experience, different ideologies and divergent ideas about what constitutes an effective insurrection. A delayed ascent to power will only breed in-fighting. Sure, we may win seats in elections and our top party leadership are allowed to live, but that is only to make it comfortable for the Pretoria government who would find it hard to continue its tacit support of a dictator if he began a mass cull of high profile opposition leaders, that cynical convention does not extend to rank and file members of the party however.

MDC membership in the First World Diaspora now consists typically of an intelligent, sophisticated and educated middle class who are viewed by Mugabe as the most likely source of recruitment for effective and charismatic leadership of any insurgency. Most of those in the UK cannot actually make a contribution because they cannot regularise their status or change it from that of the unwelcome asylum seeker .Most people go “underground” for fear of being disbelieved, consequently returned and face the same tortuous treatment they had escaped from in the first place. The Zimbabwean in the UK is at the mercy of the political climate in the UK, as long as ITN, the BBC and the LibDems keep our situation at the fore of public awareness then we may be safe. But if not, we will become victims of populist policy making designed to appease an increasingly xenophobic media. These are people who would obviously be in a position to help Zimbabwe itself by reducing their own relatives’ dependence on state food hand outs, the price of which is a vote for dictatorship. I believe that the British government can help our situation by enabling us émigrés, as unwelcome as we may be, to provide for our kinfolk back home.

The majority of the MDC membership in Zimbabwe consists of mainly unemployed and economically impotent people who are too sick and hungry to be an effective vehicle of change. It is the duty of every Zimbabwean fortunate enough to find refuge in a first world country to embrace the role we have to play in the situation at home. A campaign to get the West to put pressure on Thabo Mbeki to pressurise Robert Mugabe seems to be the rut we find ourselves in at the moment. I am certain that inevitably consensus will be reached that a crooked ballot will never bring about regime change and maybe a violent insurgency is needed. Sooner or later we’ll have to stop praying en masse for Mugabe’s demise by divine intervention and try the bullet where the ballot has failed.

THE ONLY GOOD DICTATOR IS A DEAD DICTATOR