Congratulations Mike, old mate! You have taken a stand against a brutal capitalist dictator!

Mugabe has been privatising Zimbabwean public services and screwing the poor and the workers for years. This is because he has become the lackey of the neo-liberal schemes of the world bank, the IMF and the WTO.

He has faced strikes and protests, often lead by the internationalist socialist left. He has crushed these brutally. He has frequently had jailed and beaten the young socialists who are the leaders of the Zimbabwe national students union.

He has tried to divert the attention of the masses from the capitalist economic crisis by attacking the white farmers.

This is like any corrupt capitalist politician who scapegoats an ethnic minority.

Only this minority are unlike the black minorities in Europe, who are as usually amongst the more marginalised and oppressed sections of society.

The white farmers are a relatively rich and powerfull minority, a legacy of an historic global injustice of colonial rule.

Mugabe has let them prosper for years, and is only turning on them now the neo-liberal world order is in crisis, from Argentina to Enron to Zimbabwe.

But he will not bring justice to the majority of black Zimbabweans, be they peasants, workers or students.

Many people in the UK have had their attention focused by the mass media on the horrors of Mugabes rule . This is mainly because some of the victims are priviledged and white.

But it would be hoped that for some, this could be the start of a broadening of the focus. This would enable a view of the larger pattern of the many injustices and oppressions within the global capitalist economy.

So down with all dictators! (Both the many the west supports, and the few they sometimes choose to demonise!)

Mugabe is just towing the NWO line with America, Britain and the rest of the 'Free World' and it's 'Free Speech.'

Robert Mugabe is a lunatic. He doesnt want to create a 'free zimbabwe' nor for that matter does he give too hoots about what the people of his own nation want. Hence you see evidence of illegal ballot rigging, persecution of members of rival political parties, the holding back of international food aid and restriction of such aid getting into the areas where he faced democratic political opposition during the elections 'seen as invalid and not recognised by the international community (bar a few other nasty little dictatorships around the globe)...
Mugabe is a marxist dictator not a capatalist dictator.

As he falls into the trap of power consolidation at the expense of his own nation, he essentially becomes more like Idi Amin then a competant leader. Zimbabwe was one of the few countries in Africa that could be described as 'a developing nation' as opposed to a third world nation. Unfortunately mugabe has reversed that.

The millions of people that are probably going to starve in Zimbabwe and the surrounding nations have Mugabe to thank for that.

' The white farmers are a relatively rich and powerfull minority, a legacy of an historic global injustice of colonial rule. '

Actually thats nonsense. Whilst the ownership of a few of the farms in Zimbabwe were obtained under the old colonial rule, the vast majority of those Mugabe and his goons are seizing were purchased legitimately from Mugabe's government itself. Mugabe has seized this land because he hates whites and because to consolidate his power and keep the military sweet to his 'illegally held presidentship' and to keep a certain number of people on his side... he needs a commodity to pay them off.

We don't seem to be disagreeing on the main points. Mugabe is an oppressor.

We disagree over details - whether the white farmers are legacy of colonial rule or more recent beneficiaries of Mugabe...either way, the main point is they are now the relatively priviledged scapegoats for Mugabe's crisis.

On to the other point, - Is Mugabe a capitalist or Marxist dictator? -Well, he came to power leading a nationalist liberation movement with socialist rhetoric, but then exploits and oppresses the masses. The opponents he crushes in the trades unions and student movements call themselves Marxists. So we can make up our own minds about terminology.

But in your analysis Mugabe's dictatorship is just put down to some sort of megalomania. This, if anything is the simplistic analysis!

Go and find out what the IMF etc have also been doing in Africa! Mugabe is a dictator, but he like a little marionet, pulled by strings which stretch to the global financial institutions. He enriches his own clique of rulers, and has implemented IMF policies.

As for the famine, this stretches accross southern Africa, and has many causes, Mugabe being only one.

Consider the case of Malawi. This country had a surplus of Maize earlier this year, the staple diet of its people.

Then just three months before the food crisis hit,
Malawi was encouraged by the World Bank "to keep foreign exchange instead of storing grain"

Why? Because foreign exchange is needed to repay debts. Creditors will not accept debt repayments in Malawian Kwachas. Or indeed in bags of maize. Only dollars.

Malawis President Muluzi told the BBC that the IMF and the World Bank had:

"insisted that, since Malawi had a surplus and the (government's) National Food Reserve Agency had this
huge loan, they had to sell the maize to repay the commercial banks."

So Malawi duly sold 28,000 tonnes of maize under pressure from her creditors, led by the World Bank and the IMF.

Now there is a cause of famine.

This is only one example of the lunacy and chaos caused in Africa by the world bank, the IMF and the WTO. I could go on, giving example after example all day, if I wanted to.

In conclusion, a more complex analysis is needed, which locates these brutal dictators within their full international economic, social and political context.

This means that while we provide support to the opposistion against dictators like Mugabe, we also don't excuse the criminal behavior of the institutions of global capitalism and western imperialism that oversee this whole mess.