South Africa Tells Australia To Back Off Zimbabwe

[Nottingham]

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=70c5839d6939fba9

South Africa Tells Australia To Back Off Zimbabwe
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sapa-AFP Tuesday 16th September, 2003

South Africa warned Australia against using "megaphone diplomacy" against Zimbabwe on Tuesday, as a row escalated over allowing Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to attend this year's Commonwealth summit in Nigeria.

Australia has thwarted moves by South Africa and other African nations to relax Zimbabwe's 18-month-old suspension from the Commonwealth, so Mugabe can attend the meeting in December.

Bheki Khumalo, a spokesperson for President Thabo Mbeki, said there was nothing to be gained from barring Mugabe's attendance at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (CHOGM).

"We want to appeal to the Australians to understand that megaphone diplomacy will not produce results," Khumalo told ABC radio.

more...

MegaPhone Diplomacy so that is what Bush is doing?? :bounce:

[rjbcar27]

1. Fuck Mugabe too,

He's in desparate need of a high velocity lead injection.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. they should let him in

and then arrest him. There must be things the ICC want him for. Zimbabwe is one place I think the removal of a few thugs at the top would do a world of good - I don't think it would be complete chaos with them out of the way. There's a ready-made democratic government waiting to take over, and once the country isn't run as a protection racket, it has a good chance of prospering.

[AP]

What's your definition of a thug?

[Nottingham]

5. A RepubThuglican

Bush! :bounce:

[AP]

8. Republicans don't like Mugabe because he's setting

an example for the third world that land reform can be done and that it will probably create a lot more wealth for Zimbabweans, and will probably improve the economy.

[Judi Lynn]

16. AP, I've noticed that Mugabe has also become a convenient target

for semi-literate racists who haven't taken any time to read about Rhodesia/Zimbabwe's history to discharge a lot of repressed rage inappropriately.

Over a year ago these people started showing up here in an overheated state, ready for a knock-down-drag-out, and stayed until the facts started piling up around them.

As in the case of Latin American countries, it's VITAL to actually have a clear picture of what has been happening, and that takes a quiet mind, and research, as it won't come through reading the newspaper "stories" arranged by the public relations companies hired by the British government to handle the news releases on Zimbabwe.

You remember we have had people like the Cuban "exile" Otto Reich handling that responsibility from offices like our "Office of Public Diplomacy" in the State Department for Latin America disinformation. He has been accused by Congress people of being entirely on the wrong side of the law, but was never formally charged on it, naturally.

One thing which must lodge at some point is that there are stronger countries which always will get their crafted version of events heard in stories which affect their interests in smaller or weaker countries which resist them. No two ways about it.

It seems to take some people a long time to learn this, and many people aren't willing to do the work on their own, nor will they understand how wrong their "first take" is unless they do!

[AP]

17. An aside: last year, one of the major arguments against

the state of land reform at which Zimbabwe had arrived was that it was going to result in 6 million dead, and terrible famine by last April.

In fact, there are stories in the press about former rhinoceraus parks and tobacco (export) famrs being used by Zimbabweans for subsistence farming (just as happened in South Africa after apartheid ended). Mind you, those farms weren't growing anything which ordinary Zimbabweans ate two years ago.

And, if I'm reading the stories correctly, thanks to the UK (for some strange reason) participating in a food aid program with the UN, nobody is starving, despite the fact that the transition in land onwnership does create confusion and displacement.

So much for the argument that Zimbabweans would starve thanks to land reform (although, I bet that, if the CIA had its way, Zimbabweans would starve just to dissuade other countries from embarking on land reform).

[Judi Lynn]

18. Yes, it's BEEN a while since that hysterical charge was flung

into the mix! "He's starving his own people!" I saw that one quite a few times here and another message board before the facts started catching up with them!

Once a rumor bomb gets planted with a calculated emotional impact like that one, it seems to take a while before people start recognizing there may be more to it than they assumed.

Bad news travels fast, including bogus news. Getting people to look into the story and find out more about it takes too much on their part, and a lot simply pass on it, due to weak attention spans.

[AP]

19. I have to say that, when you tracked down the background of that

woman who wrote the hysterical article the LA Times picked up, and you found that she'd written the romantic novel about a white farmer in Zimbabwe...well, that was pretty devestatingly interesting.

It may be hard to get the truth out, but when you get it out,it hurts.

I'm wondering where all those anti-land reform voices are today. I'd have to guess they're being paid to spread rumors for RW'ers about something else today. Contracts are going to have to be signed, and some checks deposited before RWers focus on Zimbabwe again.

[Judi Lynn]

20. Ha ha. They should definitely get the cash up front.

Don't know if anyone else noticed, but the guy who started the original thread which kicked up the first Zimbabwe storm here in the last year or so had actually written the very same thing he wrote here on another message board.

He used EXACTLY the same words. I copied and pasted them here, and also copied and pasted his post here over there, and asked him about it both places.

After he mumbled something about it not being so unusual to see the same things appear in two different places, he disappeared from BOTH places permanently, under his two different names.

Also, the most extreme anti-land reform, the guy who kept coming back, for days and days got his very own tombstone. You could see he was right on the cusp during that time.

This topic does bring out the worst in people who are a little wobbly, doesn't it?

You definitely opened my eyes on Zimbabwe, and my own searching for more about it was my introduction to this intense subject. I will always be so glad I read your posts, and got more and more interested in learning a bit about Rhodesia/Zimbabwe history. There's a TON to learn, and anyone who just pops off about it, slinging wild charges probably should do more reading.

That Telegraph reporter is married to a former South African journalist.

[AP]

21. I feel like I'm having a private conversation here...

...but, J.L., I just can't help but think that the silence today is very revealing. When this issue was all over the media last year, at about election time in Zimbabwe when the press was certainly trying to influence the outcome of the election, when you know there were millions of dollars flowing around, and financing negative press, a post like this would have generated tons of responses, both from, I have to guess, people paid to spread the PR, and people whose buttons were easily pushed by the PR.

Today, this is a tiny story, and...relative silence. It looks like a couple of Brits are still worked up by this issue, but can you really blame them? It's the British media which is the most aggressive retailer of the PR.

One thing that amazes me right now, is, I guess, why is Chavez winning his battle? Why is Mugabe still in power, and transferring land from European farmers to the people of Zimbabwe? Why are Ecuador, Brazil, Chile and Aregentina run by relatively liberal governments? Why is Argentina defaulting on IMF loans without there being a coup? How did Schroeder win in the German elections? How did Sweden fend off the conservatives in their last election? Why haven't the Tories taken back the UK? For all the RW victories in the last three years, this is all stuff that you know the CIA and the Pentagon would have prevented from happening any time up to 1992.

Is it because Bush is really incompetent? Is the US simply not as powerful as it was before? Maybe the Clinton adminstration's big covert achievement was to dismantle all the mechanisms of covert US imperialism, and Bush is having a hard time getting them up and running again. Maybe the rest of the world is learning all the tricks.

Actually, I'd have to guess that this might be an unintended consequence of globalism. By spreading a little bit of wealth to the rest of the world, the rest of the world is starting to use that money to consolidate political power, and sees that there is even more money to be made by plowing resources and wealth back into your own middle class. It's sort of like FDR's New Deal -- you start sharing the wealth, and the poor move up to the middle class, and the middle class starts exerting their political power.

[Judi Lynn]

22. Almost spooky, A.P.

Just cricket sounds! This has never happened.

The world is definitely going through some realignment. Makes you wonder if the _Bush people aim to whip every country before leaving.

That could be quite a task.

Latin Americans may finally insist on the right to govern themselves. After all they've been through, it's about time.

[AP]

4. What's your definition of a thug?

[Spentastic]

6. The kind of man

That describes homosexuals thusly.

"Animals in the jungle are better than these people because at least they know that this is a man or a woman,''

[AP]

9. If attitudes towards homosexuality were the litmus test for African

leadership, you might as well turn the whole continent over to the CIA.

Name one African leader who passes this test.

South Africa's president has some interesting attitudes about AIDS, no?

[rjbcar27]

10. Would like to know your position on Mugabe AP.

Care to share?

[AP]

12. The US loved Mugabe when he was killing other Africans and causing chaos

in the region because that allowed the former colonial powers to control the economy from afar.

They don't like Mugabe now for one reason only -- land reform. Joe Stiglitz said that the only thing that is going to bring the impoverished out of poverty is land reform. No matter what anybody thinks, what Mugabe is doing is going to be a huge improvement over the post-colonial system of land ownership. And what's going on today in Zimbabwe, is no different thant the US sabotaging Venezuela's economy becuase they don't want Chavez's moderate Keynsian policies to serve as an example for anyone else, and it's like Chile in '73. Unfortunately, Mugabe isn't the same quality of human being as Chavez or Allende, but that has more to do with the state of fucked up African politics. If he were like Allende, he'd never be in the position he's in today to embark upon land reform.

[rjbcar27]

13. He's a despot

Who is hell bent on shutting down the last remaining independent newspaper in Zimbabwe, jails and tortures those who disagree with his policies and flat out stole the 'election.'

He's no better than SH and needs to go.

[AP]

14. There are no white hats in Zimbabwe. The Daily News isn't

totally independent. It's the mouthpiece for foreign interests which would like to sabotage Zimbabwe. You know when you read that the CIA spends billions on media BS? The Daily News is the kind of media that's at the receiving end of that kind of scratch.

This is where the moral absolutism starts to fall apart. Zimbabwe is the object of a lot of subterfuge from the west, and the west does NOT want Zimbabwe to be successful with land reform. If Mugabe didn't do the things he was doing, you can be sure there'd be a government in place which would do the West's bidding, and there'd be no land reform, and 100 years from now, Zimbabwe would still be as fucked up as it was in 1998.

Bringing Zimbabwe to this point -- this post colonial, disfunctional economy -- required a lot of blood and a lot of displacement and a lot of misery. You all are fooling yourself if you think that getting out of it isn't going to have to be achieved with as much resistance. You think shutting down the Daily News is ugly? You should have seen what the British did to create a situation where there was a Daily News (which is basically the mouthpiece for the status quo of continued Zimbabwean dependence on former colonial powers).

[donsu]

15. agree

nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. The kind of people who run a country like this:

New Internationalist report on Zimbabwe, 2001:
(see http://www.newint.org/ ; go to Country Profiles, and find the 2 Zimbabwe reports)

"Instead an increasingly coercive regime is leading the country to the brink of collapse.

Mugabe, once internationally praised for his reconciliatory policies, is today perceived as erratic and oppressive. Some critics have gone so far as to call him a dictator, and conditions in the country worsen day by day."
...
"Nevertheless, Zimbabwe’s economy relies heavily on the produce of white-owned land, making redistribution a far more sensitive issue than the Government seems willing to acknowledge. Over 1,100 farms have been invaded by ‘war veterans’, most of whom are too young to have been involved in the war for independence. The result has been a destabilized agricultural industry: the export of tobacco for example, the country’s largest single export earner, has plummeted by 30 per cent.
Another destabilizing factor has been the ongoing fuel crisis, due largely to extreme corruption within the National Oil Company, causing widespread riots which have been repeatedly suppressed by government forces."
...
"The country’s involvement in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been a further severe financial drain. Up to 13,000 troops have been in the Congo at any one time, despite the fact that 70 per cent of Zimbabwe’s population oppose its involvement. To worsen matters, the IMF and the World Bank have severed their relationships with Zimbabwe following the non-repayment of loans. Similarly, the land-reform problems have alienated international donors – most Western countries have frozen all aid.

The human-rights situation is worsening, including the intimidation of opposition supporters: over 31 were killed in the run-up to last year’s elections. Furthermore, the violence towards what is left of the free media has escalated dramatically, including the arrest and torture of journalists."


Income distribution 2/5 (1990 4/5) Comment: The largely corrupt commercial and political élite holds much of the income, while rural and urban poverty is endemic

Freedom 2/5 (1990 4/5) Comment: A democratic system constitutionally, but constrained at present, with the oppression of opposition, the media, and minority groups

Conclusion: Mugabe’s ZANU-PF Government has become increasingly corrupt and coercive. The present economic crisis has been accompanied by increasing human-rights abuses. Calls for Mugabe’s resignation are growing and his retirement is seen by both the national and international community as critical if the country is to move forward.


Amnesty International's list of things wrong in Zimbabwe:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/zimbabwe/index.do
includes gagging the press (home and abroad), beatings and killings of protestors, arbitrary arrests, and torture.


The International Rehabiliation Council for Torture Victims:
http://www.irct.org/usr/irct/home.nsf/unid/BKEN-5HMGQW
"No election can be considered free and fair when conducted in an environment in which there is no respect for the rule of law, when intimidation tactics including violence and torture are being systematically used, and when the media is unable to report openly on the election proceedings.

The IRCT has been monitoring and documenting systematic violence in Zimbabwe for the past three years, and remains seriously alarmed at the reports of ongoing violence following the election last weekend."
...
"The level of political violence reveals a brutal repressive regime, which denied the people of Zimbabwe the right to a free and fair election"

You can go on and on, just by looking for anything on the web that's political to do with Zimbabwe. The sources quoted are not ones trying to support the white farmers (apart from their basic rights of freedom from torture etc.); they see a country with a corrupt, violent leadership, who have fixed the elections time after time.

Perhaps things have gone quiet on the reporting of Zimbabwe because Mugabe has thrown out all the Western journalists. He's no fool; he knows that the Soviet Union got away with literal murder for years by controlling the reporting to outside countries, and he intends to do the same.

[AP]

24. Any assessment of Mugabe that begins "he was once praised..."

and then continues on to criticize him for Zimbabwe's economic failures is immediately suspect.

Mugabe was once a murderous thug who created instability in Africa, but whom former colonial powers loved because he let them keep their land for much longer than they had agreed to keep it. Now that he's not engaged in an African on African civil war and destabilizing the region, and now that he's holding European farmers to their decades old promise to transfer back the land, he's a problem.

Don't you think that's a little fucked up?

As for the motivations and impacts for the world bank pulling out investment, you should read up on US tactics for sabotaging Allende when they were afraid that he would set an example for the third world.

Argentina was considered an IMF/World Bank success when it was doing the things that they wanted it to. That was merely a bubble that collapsed in on itself. Zimbabwe is the same thing. Its IMF-friendly post-colonial economy worked great to make Europeans wealthy, but it was totally unsustainable. That's why things are miserable now, and that's why there's land reform, and land reform is why there's so much resistance.

I can't emphasize sufficiently how unfortunate it is that there is no Zimbabwean FDR who could fight the tyranny abroad, and reform the economy within. But that doesn't mean the battle lines aren't sufficiently clear that it's not possible to figure out what's better for Zimbabwe's future. Zimbabwe's future is brighter if land reform continues, and if the CIA doesn't put in place the opposition party which promised to stop land reform. The oppositon party is basically financed by Europeans and, if in power, would put the post-colonial rip off economy train back on the rails.

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. you seem to have a blindspot for the words

'torture', 'corrupt', 'coercive', 'oppression' and many more. This is what the problem is. If you don't know the New Internationalist, I suggest you look round the site - it is a long established magazine which has always supported the common people in developing countries. If you think they're part of the European farmer/World Bank side, you couldn't be more wrong.

Argentina's economic problems have nothing to do with the murderous regime of Mugabe. If you want a parallel from South America, try Pinochet - they both should be in front of a court for capital crimes.

[AP]

26. The guy is a thug. No doubt.

But that's not why the west wants the opposition party in control. And you know who's going to have to resort to thuggery? Any party which succeeds Mugabe who has to clear the land of all the subsistence farmers who thinks it belongs to them now.

One of the justifications for hating Mugabe was an amanesty international report on human rights abuses. Before the Iraq invasion, the US cited an amnesty report justifying invasion. Amnesty Int'l went out of its way to say that nothing in that report should be considered a justification for overthrowing the government of Iraq. We're talking about SADAAM HUSSEIN!!

Human rights abuses, generally, shouldn't be though of as good reason for western intrigue to overthrow nations so that the west can insure that profits continue to flow to the west.

[muriel_volestrangler]

27. Thank you

Whatever the west's aims, most reports were that much of the land ended up in the hands of Mugabe's supporters. Some (the rich ones) got a lot; some (the foot soldiers) got a little, and frequently didn't know how to farm it. Some redistribution to the former (native) farm workers who did know how to farm it would be a good idea.

I never advocated invading, or overthrowing the nation of, Zimbabwe; I wanted Mugabe and the worst of his government arrested.

[AP]

28. You have to be careful with those "reports"

Some huge number (50,000?) of people have taken title to the land. Mugabe had lots of friends, eh? And any Zimbabwean who took this land according to the law (which was implementing a long-delayed agreement to turn over the land; I think it was called the Westphalia Agreement, made in '82 or thereabouts) has way more right to it, and took it back in a way that was infinitely more civilized than the way the British took it from Zimbabweans originally. (In case you weren't aware, the Brits were murdering Zimbabweans for their land all the way up until Mugabe took control -- it wasn't something that happened only in the 19th century followed by decades of benevolent rule; it was ongoing slaughter).

Incidentally, the idea that black Zimbabweans don't know how to farm the land verges on racism, on the one hand, and an outright lie on the other. Subsistence farming of the type being done on this land (maize, I believe) is much more productive than tobacco for export farming and the endangered rhinoceraus farming that was being done on the land previously, in just about every measure of the term productivity, but primarily in the sense of resources-in/produce-out, and in the sense of putting food and wealth in the hands of Zimbabweans.

And if you read the reports you mention, they're very schizophrenic. I read one piece describing how, if you drive around Zimbabwe now, you see poor people living off the land, cutting back the brush in once-pristine veldt (or whatever they called it), eating the wild animals which live on the land. I know they're trying to confuse middle class suburbanites (who might place environmentalism and animal rights above social justice) that Zimbabwe is going to the dogs. But, I think any sensible person who contemplates that picture for more than ten seconds would think, "poor people have land, and they're living off of it? Good! What the hell took so long?"

And don't wory, once you remove the irrationality of the post-colonial illegitimate distribution of land, and you put the title to it in the hands of the people, which then gives them collateral against which to raise capital, you'll see that the land starts to be used in a very efficient, wealth-producing, middle-class enriching way. (That's what Joe Stiglitz says, and I agree -- and, incidentally, it was that sort of message which Wall St didn't like and led to him to being hated by Larry Summers, I believe.)

If you cite one of the more detailed "reports," I (or J.L.) will help you do a critical reading of it.

[Judi Lynn]

30. A.P., found something you'd recognize instantly

in an article I found in google concerning a joint venture between Israel and Cuba which Mika mentioned on another thread.

This was within the article I was reading:

(snip) "In the Caribbean, food insecurity is a direct result of centuries of colonialism that prioritized the production of sugar and other cash crops for export, neglecting food crops for domestic consumption," (snip)

As soon as I saw it, I also remembered reading some of your early posts about the actual crops being grown by the English settlers in Zimbabwe. I remembered what you had discussed with the pack of pro-settler posters then.

You can see the pattern is identical. Pathetic, isn't it?

Here's the article, about the amazing results Cubans are getting in organic farming, in case you're interested in seeing it:
http://www.theexperiment.org/articles.php?news_id=1186

I know NOTHING about agriculture, but it would be wondrous if some group of non-hostile people who had learned a successful technique could work with Zim people.

[StandWatie]

2. uh-oh..

Thabo Mbeki is sounding less and less like London's tame, black, African.

[MrPrax]

7. Power Corrupts Absolutely...

In addition to all the other things--trying to turn SF into Argentina in record time--this quote is hysterical:
"Bheki Khumalo, a spokesperson for President Thabo Mbeki, said there was nothing to be gained from barring Mugabe's attendance at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (CHOGM)."

um...a lot was gained by 'barring' the Afrikanners from international bodies--like the End of Apartheid...
I believe a lot of "megaphone diplomacy" was used, much to the chagrin of Thatcher and Cheney

What a bunch of scum...

[StandWatie]

11. it's not the same thing..

Whatever you think of Mugabe he's their asshole, not London's and if they would quit pissing around trying to jam in their quisling candidates he would probably pass from the scene. Blair bitching all the time is counter-productive and shores up Mugabe's popularity.

[rooboy]

29. I agree with the South Africans...

that John Howard and his foreign minister, Alexander Downer, have used Mugabe as an excuse to further their Walter Mitty-inspired self images. They usually talk the toughest AFTER a vote has been taken to do nothing about him. It's safer that way.

I wouldn't agree that the the South Africans have done much to help Zimbabwe, though.