.. and the present day disaster has nothing at all to do with Mugabe's despotic rule and antidemocratic policies, state-sanctioned political violence and the intimidation, torture and murder of black democrates and opposition leaders, nor the use of hunger and starvation as a political weaopon by Mugabe's thugs, not the transfer of land not to the people, but to political patrons of the ruling elite. No, this has nothing to do with it!

See:  http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk - news from black editors and journalists whose presses have been shut down by Mugabe's regime and who now print in Johannesburg and publish online.

We have watched our country die - where was the West ?

and to those critics who think mugabe is a monster, they are engaging in more demonisation that services the neo-colonial ambitions of the british elite.

It's quite worrying that there are still people deluded enough to believe that Mugabe is just a victim. Land reform hasn't been carried out to overturn the inequality lingering from the colonial era; it's been carried out as a corrupt system of bribery - land going to the biggest supporters of Mugabe.

Are the human rights groups just lying when they document endless incidents of torture and intimidation?

Nazi German Holocaust? Western propaganda.
Ethnic cleansing by Serb authorites in Bosina and Kosovo? Western propaganda.
Maoist human rights abuses, and enforced strikes and re-education in Nepal? Western propaganda.
Kidnapping and murder of civilians by the FARC in Colombia? Western propaganda.
Widespread human rights abuses and tyranny by Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe? Western propaganda.

I AM SO PIG SICK AND TIRED OF HEARING PEOPLE DISMISSING ALL THESE INJUSTICES AS "Western propaganda". So maybe the corporate and state press do report the one side - it doesn't mean it is a total lie! Yes, maybe exaggerated, yes, maybe not taking in account the other side (in the case of Colombia and Nepal one side is as bad as the other), but there is NO excuse for denying that bloodshed is occuring at the hands of these groups that people on the far left too often tend to fetishise as they are anti-government, or anti-Western, or even just anti-American.

Qwerty wrote:

".. and the present day disaster has nothing at all to do with Mugabe's despotic rule and antidemocratic policies, state-sanctioned political violence and the intimidation, torture and murder of black democrates and opposition leaders, nor the use of hunger and starvation as a political weaopon by Mugabe's thugs, not the transfer of land not to the people, but to political patrons of the ruling elite. No, this has nothing to do with it!"

Whilst I agree that Elich underplays the brutality of the Mugabe regime, it is definitely a step too far to say that the regime and the regime alone is responsible for everything. If you had read the whole article, you would have seen this:

"Western reports repeatedly charged that land reform was an exercise in rewarding President Mugabe’s "friends and cronies." With 90,000-some families settled throughout the first twenty years of independence, and an additional 134,000 receiving allocations during fast track land reform in 2000-2, one can only conclude that President Mugabe was an extraordinarily popular man to have so many friends and close colleagues. Inevitably in such a complex process, there were officials who abused their office and arranged to be given multiple farms. An investigation undertaken by the Presidential Land Resettlement Committee identified 329 government and party officials who had profited in this manner, and later investigations were to find 70 more. The image of land reform as presented by Western media is almost solely one of corruption, yet such a portrayal is deliberately and highly misleading. Out of the 134,000 resettled farmers, those who abused the process to grab multiple farms accounted for a minuscule 0.3 percent of all allocations. These individuals characterized the entire land reform process, Western reporters told us. But to accept that argument, one would have to regard 99.7 percent of land recipients as exceptions to the rule"

Now, are you denying that 224 000 people have been resettled?

Elich does provide us with useful information that helps us get past the hype, and to flesh out the reality of the need for land reform. He also provides compelling evidence of the West's agenda, which is to ensure that land reform does not happen.

Rhodes wrote:

"09.05.2005 22:16
We have watched our country die - where was the West ?"

Applying sanctions, suspending Zimbabwe from the commonwealth and trying to force Mugabe back into an agreement which would ensure that land reform didn't happen and that the best land remained concentrated in the hands of a few 1000 whites.

But it must not be forgotten that in 1999 Zimbabweans were involved in a massive campaign to rein in Mugabe's excesses - and had Tsvangarai thrown his lot in with the masses, rather than the farming and business elite, they may have achieved much more. Instead Tsvangirai led the movement down the road of elections, and made it easy for Mugabe's regime to identify and neutralise the leadership. It is Zimbabweans, not the West who will have to liberate the country from its ruling elite in the end.

brian wrote:

"and to those critics who think mugabe is a monster, they are engaging in more demonisation that services the neo-colonial ambitions of the british elite."

Mugabe is certainly responsible for some nasty oppression and brutality - however, the west is unconcerned by such behaviours when its own interests are being protected. Mugabe is copping it because his policies are a direct challenge to western interests in Zimbabwe, and have ramifications for land ownership in surrounding countries.

Andrew wrote:

"It's quite worrying that there are still people deluded enough to believe that Mugabe is just a victim. Land reform hasn't been carried out to overturn the inequality lingering from the colonial era; it's been carried out as a corrupt system of bribery - land going to the biggest supporters of Mugabe.

Are the human rights groups just lying when they document endless incidents of torture and intimidation?"

No - the human rights groups are not lying - however they speak for the interests of the landed few and the West rather than for the majority of impoverished Zimbabweans, and they offer little critique of the great inequalities that the Mugabe regime inherited, and which they were forced to perpetuate for over a decade through the provisions of the Lancaster House Agreement.

Unltimately Britain has benefitted greatly from that inequality - and has attempted to maintain it. Land redistibution would work better if there were funds to kickstart the process for the new landholders, but the West has put a hold on funding since the process was started. In spite of this, there are studies that show that some of the first Zimbabweans to benefit from land redistribution in the 80s are now producing more intensively than the white farmers were doing before that, in terms of production per hectare.

the middle finger wrote:

"blah blah blah"

The corporate media in this country has historic links to the colonial settlers in Zimbabwe. The brutality of the Mugabe regime does not invalidate the fact that inequality in land distribution is a problem that stems form forceable seizure of indigenous land by British colonials, or that there is clear injustice in a few thousand whites (0.3% of the population) being the owners of most of Zimbabwe's land, and especially its most arable land, whilst millions of black Zimbabweans were restricted to arid, overworked land in the "native reserves"

It is time for THAT inequality and injustice to be acknowledged in the debate.