{"id":161,"date":"2008-12-20T08:25:35","date_gmt":"2008-12-20T08:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2008\/12\/mugabe-says-zimbabwe-is-mine.html"},"modified":"2008-12-20T08:25:35","modified_gmt":"2008-12-20T08:25:35","slug":"mugabe-says-zimbabwe-is-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2008\/12\/mugabe-says-zimbabwe-is-mine.html","title":{"rendered":"Mugabe says, “Zimbabwe is mine”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Mugabe is not going quietly<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

BINDURA, Zimbabwe (AFP) — President Robert Mugabe declared Friday
\nthat “Zimbabwe is mine” and vowed never to surrender to calls to step
\ndown, as his political rival threatened to quit stalled unity
\ngovernment talks.<\/p>\n

Addressing his ZANU-PF party’s annual
\nconference amid a ruinous political crisis and a deadly cholera
\nepidemic , Mugabe returned to the kind of defiance he has often shown
\nin the face of mounting criticism.<\/p>\n

“I will never, never, never,
\nnever surrender. Zimbabwe is mine, I am a Zimbabwean. Zimbabwe for
\nZimbabweans. Zimbabwe never for the British, Britain for the British,”
\nMugabe told his party’s annual conference.<\/p>\n

The veteran leader in the former British colony said he would remain until “his people decided to change him.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There’s a powerful piece in the LRB about the lessons of Zimbabwe<\/a> which provide an excellent history lesson as well as provides context to the problems facing the troubled African state. In a nutshell, Mugabe is a problem; but removing him won’t magically solve things, because the country still has to face its post-colonial legacy of land reform. <\/p>\n

It’s hard to excerpt a piece as lengthy as this but I think it’s one that really merits a full read. Here’s the introductory paragraphs:<\/p>\n

\n

It is hard to think of a figure more reviled in the West than Robert
\nMugabe. Liberal and conservative commentators alike portray him as a
\nbrutal dictator, and blame him for Zimbabwe’s descent into
\nhyperinflation and poverty. The seizure of white-owned farms by his
\nblack supporters has been depicted as a form of thuggery, and as a
\ncause of the country’s declining production, as if these lands were
\ndoomed by black ownership. Sanctions have been imposed, and opposition
\ngroups funded with the explicit aim of unseating him.<\/p>\n

There is no
\ndenying Mugabe’s authoritarianism, or his willingness to tolerate and
\neven encourage the violent behaviour of his supporters. His policies
\nhave helped lay waste the country’s economy, though sanctions have
\nplayed no small part, while his refusal to share power with the
\ncountry’s growing opposition movement, much of it based in the trade
\nunions, has led to a bitter impasse. This view of Zimbabwe’s crisis can
\nbe found everywhere, from the Economist<\/em> and the Financial Times<\/em> to the Guardian<\/em> and the New Statesman<\/em>,
\nbut it gives us little sense of how Mugabe has managed to survive. For
\nhe has ruled not only by coercion but by consent, and his land reform
\nmeasures, however harsh, have won him considerable popularity, not just
\nin Zimbabwe but throughout southern Africa. In any case, the
\npreoccupation with his character does little to illuminate the
\nsocio-historical issues involved.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m all for ousting Mugabe but people are treating him as the sole embodiment of evil. Zimbabwe’s problems go a lot deeper than that. As the intro asserts, Mugabe is indeed governing partially with the consent of Zimbabweans. The article has this to say about the recent (disputed) elections:<\/p>\n

Despite the EU’s imposition of sanctions in the run-up to the
\nparliamentary elections of 2002, Mugabe polled 56.2 per cent of the
\nvote against Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC’s 42 per cent. There were
\nwidespread allegations of Zanu-PF violence and last-minute
\ngerrymandering, with polling stations in urban areas – Tsvangirai’s
\nelectoral base – closing early and extra stations being set up in rural
\nareas, where Mugabe’s support was assured. Nonetheless, it was clear
\nthat support for Zanu-PF was higher than in the pre-fast-track
\nelections of 2000.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the essay goes into a lot of detail as to what groups support Mugabe and why. In a nutshell, Mugabe has given Zimbabwe’s land back to Zimbabwe’s people, confiscating it from the British white settlers, who had a grotesquely disproportionate stranglehold. Underestimating this and pretending that Mugabe governs as a Saddam-esque dictator at odds with the will of his people is a mistake, and does nothing to help the Zimbabweans conceive of and realize a better future ahead. <\/p>\n

More importantly, the essay provides a lot to think about, with regards to the effectiveness of sanctions as punitive diplomacy, about the consequences of the colonial tactic of appropriating the best land by a foreign settler minority, and the intersection of ethnicity and class as internal forces that need to be reconciled. These questions have applicability to Iraq, to Palestine, and to Iran, and US foreign policy in general. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Mugabe is not going quietly: BINDURA, Zimbabwe (AFP) — President Robert Mugabe declared Friday that “Zimbabwe is mine” and vowed never to surrender to calls to step down, as his political rival threatened to quit stalled unity government talks. 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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}