VIDEO: Tourism in Zimbabwe: visiting the ruins of Rhodesia

Earlier this month we posted "The truth about Rhodesia - a warning to liberals of the AABC", a video explaining how, in 1980, the British betrayed their kith and kin in Rhodesia, and gave the country, now renamed Zimbabwe over to the Marxist-oriented Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe, whose ZANU-PF party has ruled the unfortunate country ever since.

"Majority rule" has turned the once-prosperous (pre-1980) country into the sort of place characterized by President Trump as a "shithole". It has been ruined by ignorance, incompetence and corruption. John Edmonds, In the video, John Edmonds presents a potted history of Zimbabwe, then embarks on a tour to see for himself the ruins of Rhodesia and the reality of the failed state today.

 

This video too can well be described as a cautionary tale. This is what happens when you hand your country or state (Hello, California!) over to letting loony lefties whose "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" (DEI) agenda is driven by anti-white racism, gender ideology and a complete ignorance of economics. Keep it in mind when you vote.

The truth about Rhodesia - a warning to liberals of the AABC countries

Rhodesia’s story isn't what you've been told! Today, it's barely mentioned at all. You would be hard-pressed to find, in the AABC countries (America, Australia, Britain and Canada), anyone under the age of 60 who could tell you what or where Rhodesia was. 

For 15 years (1965-1980), the world poured its energy into erasing Rhodesia from the map. But once it was gone, silence! Zimbabwe, like so many "decolonised" African nations, soon collapsed into chaos. Under Comrade Robert Mugabe, the dictator who ruled from independence in 1980 until he was deposted in a coup in 2017, and his successor Emmerson "E.D." Mnangagwa, the country was brought to ruin. Watch this video and ask whether the Rhodesians were really the villains history says they were, and what happens if people of that stripe come to power. FAFO!

Walt first visited Rhodesia, as it then was, some 57 years ago. As the narrator of this video says, the handwriting was on the wall, even then. When I returned to live in Zimbabwe (as Rhodesia had been renamed) in the 1990s, there were still many Africans (as black people like to be called) who said that things were better in the days of Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith. 

After independence, Zimbabwe quickly became a basket case, destroyed by the corruption, ignorance and incompetence of the Marxist government of Comrade Mugabe. One of Walt's agents, who left the sinking ship at about the same time, and now resides in the Disunited Kingdom, returned in January to attend to some legal matters. She reports that things have not got any better in the quarter-century since we left. It is not wrong, she says, to regard Zimbabwe as a failed state, which has hit bottom and can never rise again. What a pity.

VIDEO: Wm. F. Buckley talks with Ian Smith, Prime Minister of Rhodesia

Regular readers of WWW will know that I have an abiding interest in Zimbabwe, a dictatorship in southern Africa which went from being the second-most prosperous on the Dark Continent to what Still-President Trump would now call a "shithole".

I lived and worked in Zimbabwe in the 90s, and could see the handwriting on the wall after the former Big Man, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, decided to pay all his "war veterans" gratuities of Z$50,000 each after they had staged a series of protests, claiming that they had not received the "benefits" of their revolt against the "white settler regime", viz: white cars, white houses and white women.

The unbudgeted payouts saw the Zimbabwe dollar lose its value by 70% in one day -- I remember it well -- and analysts say the move signalled Zimbabwe's well-documented economic collapse. Banknotes were issued in denominations of billions and even trillions of dollars and were literally not worth the paper they were printed on.

The Mugabe government abandoned the "Zimkwacha" because of hyperinflation in 2009 -- 1 US dollar was worth around Z$35 quadrillion at the time -- and started using American dollars and South African rand. 

But I digress. I was about to tell you that when I first went to Africa, there was no Zimbabwe. The country was then known as Rhodesia, a former British colony which declared its independence from No-longer-great Britain on 11 November 1965. I went there about four years later, over five years before William F. Buckley Jr. went there to record this interview with Prime Minister Ian Smith. 

I went to Rhodesia on a fact-finding mission, to see for myself whether the Africans (by which was meant "blacks") were so badly off under white minority rule as was argued by the "progressives" at the United Nations, the World Council of Churches and elsewhere. I concluded that it would be a mistake -- detrimental to the well-being of the Africans -- to overthrow the "white settler government" and impose "majority rule". But it was clear even then, in 1969, that the mistake was going to be made, in the name of "freedom and equality, yada yada yada. The mistake was made, and the result is the shithole that is Zimbabwe today. 

In this interview, recorded in April of 1974, Ian Smith makes the case for the continuation of minority rule until the majority population should be ready to govern themselves. Mr Smith was right, but of course that doesn't matter now, does it. 

One thing to note, at about the 38-minute mark, is that Mr Smith asserts that the black revolutionaries were financed and trained by Communist China. Of course today's China would never do that kind of thing.

Further viewing: Thames Television documentary visit to Rhodesia, June 1975. Includes interview with Ian Smith.  

Zimbabwe: Bob's not your uncle any more

So, farewell at last, Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe, former tinpot dictator of what he turned into a shithole country. "Uncle Bob" (as no-one called him, ever) died early today in Singapore at the age of 95.

Most Zimbabweans would say (in whispers, if not out loud) that his death did not come soon enough to save his country from its precipitous descent into chaos and bankruptcy. Your Obdt Servant laboured in Zimbabwe during the late 1990s, trying to help its businesspeople learn modern, Western management techniques. But they couldn't adopt or adapt the things they learned, because they were stymied at every turn by Comrade Bob's Marxist policies, which turned the once-prosperous Rhodesia into an economic basket case.

"Things will be better once Bob goes," people said. But Bob replied, "Handiende!" It means "I will not go!" And he didn't, ruling the country with the proverbial iron fist from its independence in 1980 until, late in 2017, he was finally deposed by Comrade ED [No relation! Ed.] Mnangagwa (pictured below) in a bloodless coup. Since then, things have gotten no better, proving yet again that there is not one country in Africa who leaders -- black or brown -- are capable of managing an economy.

Instead, they rely on massive injections of foreign aid supplied by us chumps in the West, and latterly the Chinese, who still have a lot to learn about Africa, the land of bambazonke. Incompetence and corruption come naturally to African leaders. When mismanagement and kleptomania become too much for even the Swedes and the Brits to stomach (see "Reform or no support, UK tells ED", Zimbabwe Newsday, 6/9/19), the aid money stops flowing and the people starve.

Comrade Bob, who took power after the perfidious Brits sold out their Rhodesian kith and kin in 1980, said more than once that he wanted to rule for life. In that he was typical of the African "Big Man" syndrome, in which the people of shithole countries acquiesced in one-man rule by the likes of Hastings Banda (Malawi), Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga (Congo/Zaïre/Congo), Jean-Bédel Bokassa aka Emperor Bokassa I (Central African Republic) and Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar Gaddafi (Libya - not all the Big Men were black Africans). But growing discontent about his government's maladministrationd a military intervention, impeachment proceedings by the parliament and large street demonstrations for his removal.

The November 2017 announcement of Comrade Mugabe's resignation (after he initially ignored escalating calls to quit, and take his lovely and fragrant wife Grace with him) triggered wild celebrations in the streets of the Ha-ha-harare, the fun capital of Africa. Well into the night, cars honked and people danced and sang in a spectacle of free expression that would have been impossible during his years in power and reflected hopes for a better future. But there has been no change for the povo (= poor people) of Zimbabwe, only more of the same, with an even Bigger Man ruling the roost. Prognosis? Dim and getting dimmer. Don't bother to stay tuned.

Further reading: The picture above was scraped from the Associated Press article "A look at the shattered Zimbabwe that Mugabe left behind", as posted on the CTV News site, 6/9/19. Quote from one of the povo: "Life was not that good [under Mugabe], but it was never this bad."

UPDATED - "This is Africa!" - Air Zimbabwe down to one plane

Half a century ago, when new "nations" were being created out of European colonies in Asia and Africa -- "Ready or not, here they come!" -- one of the hallmarks of newfound independence was considered to be a national airline. Even the tiniest shithole had to have a national carrier, usually included in the post-independence deal with the mother country.

So it was with Zimbabwe, when the former Rhodesia was handed over by the perfidious British to the black terrorists led by Robert Mugabe in 1980. The slight difference was that Rhodesia already had a small but functional airline, Air Rhodesia, which had a fleet of about a dozen aircraft including a couple of Viscounts -- lovely old prop jobs -- and even a B707. Like most things run by the "white settler regime", it worked. And it was given, in working order, to Comrade Bob's Marxist government, who painted the planes with red, yellow, green and black stripes and dubbed the "new" airline Air Zimbabwe.

Thanks to the ignorance, incompetence and corruption which bedevil most state-owned enterprises in most African countries, the planes inherited from Air Rhodesia were allowed to fall apart long ago. They were replaced by a succession of other types: B737s, a BAe-146, three Chinese MA-40s, a couple of little Fokkers, and two B767s which, in Walt's daze in Zimbabwe, were the pride of the fleet. One was at the beck and call of Uncle Bob, so effectively out of service, but the rest of us were allowed to fly in the other one, occasionally. Here's a pic I took in 1993 at what used to be called Jan Smuts International Airport, in Johannesburg.

Today, that B767-200ER is the only plane Air Zimbabwe has left, and may be grounded tomorrow or the next day. NewsDay reports that one of its two engines caught fire during a flight from O.R. Tambo International Airport (the new name for "Janny Smuts") to Ha-ha-harare (the fun capital of Zimbabwe) on Sunday evening after developing a fault. According to a state released yesterday, "Air Zimbabwe wishes to inform the public that their Boeing 767-200ER servicing flight UM462 experienced a malfunction in one of its engines, which caused a 'brief' tailpipe fire."

The carrier said the malfunction did not threaten the continuation of the flight or the safety of the crew and passengers on board, and that the aircraft landed safely in Harare at 2035. Air Zimbabwe confirmed that their engineers have started investigations into the incident, but continued, "We regret to inform our valued passengers that this incident may result in a disruption of our normal schedule."

This came barely a day after the same plane was involved in a bird strike incident after take-off at the Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo International Airport in Bulawayo. The plane, however, landed safely at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport in the capital. In March, the struggling national airline said it was using the aircraft, the only one in service, for all its routes. Such is the reality of Zimbabwe today. Mother Africa Wins Again.

UPDATED ADDED 1/5/19 [MAYDAY! MAYDAY! LOL Ed.] - NewsDay reports today that "Beleaguered Air Zimbabwe has bought a new plane, an Embraer ERJ-145, bringing the number of planes owned by the company to two. Air Zimbabwe was put under construction [??? Ed.] in 2018 after it was diagnosed to be a failing parastatal. The new plane is branded Zimbabwe Airways which is the name of a failed airline that was fronted by former President Robert Mugabe's son-in-law, Simba Chikore." Right there, in the last two sentences, is everything you need to know about Zimbabwe and about how things work (or not) in Africa.

VIDEO LINK ADDED 19/6/19: "Air Zimbabwe - The World's Most Dangerous Airline?", the experience of a veteran traveller. Pretty much the way Walt remembers it, having flown in these same planes over 20 years ago.

VIDEOS (2): What happens when black Africans turf out white farmers

The day before yesterday, President Trump (Yes, lefties, he's still POTUS!) tweeted that he had directed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to investigate the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and large-scale killing of farmers.

The lamestream media, not to mention the gliberal media (Hello Clinton News Network and MSNBC) are having a field day (no pun intended) saying that the President is doing this only to deflect attention from the supposed problems created for him by the legal embroglio into which Messrs (((Cohen))) and Manafort have sunk or been dragged. The rabid anti-Trumpers at Vox call the dispossessing and murder of South African farmers "a virulent, racist conspiracy theory that has been a pet cause of hardcore white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and the alt-right."

In fact the reports are true. Walt, who has considerable experience of southern Africa, called attention to them months ago. See "Aussies welcome Boers fleeing South African land grab", WWW 14/3/18, and "South Africans won't slaughter white farmers... at least not right now", WWW 3/3/18.

Since I posted those, a number of videos have appeared which tell the truth about what's happening in South Africa, and why its far-left government (not to mention its hungry people) will soon regret turfing out the boers (= farmers) responsible for the majority of SA's food production. Here's the first of them, asking a very good question.



And here's the second, produced by an Australian news team, in which we learn that Zimbabwe (known in more prosperous days as Rhodesia), where the landgrab idea was applied at the turn of this century, is now begging the "white settlers" to come back and restart its moribund agricultural sector.



The speaker in the first video asks if the South Africans have learned nothing from the example of their neighbours to the North. Walt answers: apparently not, but they will learn... the hard way. While they're learning, millions of dollars in food aid will be supplied by the western democracies, because to let them starve would be, errr... you know... racist... wouldn't it.

South Africans won't slaughter white farmers... at least not right now

"White cars, white houses, white women!" That's what black African terrorists were told they get, once they had wrested independence from the colonialists and white settlers. That's what they were fighting for. Not democracy but white cars, white houses and white women!

On 24 October 1964 Britain granted independence to Northern Rhodesia, which was promptly renamed Zambia. One of the first things the new black government of the Marxist Kenneth Kaunda did was to expel the mostly white commercial farmers, so their farms could be "indigenized" -- turned over to his relatives and cronies. The new farmers knew nothing about commercial farming (or even subsistence farming, in some cases) and to no-one's surprise the fertile land went back to bush. Zambia went from being an exporter of food to a net importer.

One of the countries Zambia imported food from was Rhodesia, which was run by white settlers. Rhodesia was the second-most prosperous country in sub-Saharan Africa, after South Africa, which was also run by, errr, white volk. The perfidious Brits sold out their Rhodesian kith and kin in 1980, handing the country over to Comrade Robert Mugabe and his merry band of kleptomaniacs. It took them until 2000 to seize the famously productive white farms, which were handed over to Mugabe's family and friends.

I was there, and on doctor's advice left, just in the nick of time. The botched and often violent redistribution (read: theft) of land left many farms in ruins, and the drop in production triggered an economic crisis that still haunts the country. Uncle Bob's cronies and comrades not only were ignorant of large-scale farming, but had no interest in it. They treated their farms as good places for a Sunday braai, nothing more, and just as in Zambia, the land went out of production and Zimbabwe was plunged into permanent food insecurity.

The other country Zambia, and later Zimbabwe import food from, even today, is South Africa. That country had been independent for a century or so, but didn't come under the control of black Africans until 1994, when the whites saw the black writing on the wall and made a deal with the Nelson Mandela-led African National Congress under which there was to be no wholesale seizure of farms or other sectors of the economy. I was there for that too, and remember a friend warning me "Don't be fooled. In another ten years things will be just like up north." He was wrong, but only about the timeline.

When apartheid ended in 1994, white farmers -- the word in Afrikaans is "boers" -- owned about 85% of South Africa's better farmland. A 2017 government audit found the percentage had fallen to 72%. That is 72% too much, according to Julius Malema, the avowed Marxist leader of the opposition in the country's parliament. This week he introduced a motion, which passed almost unanimously, calling for the amendment of South Africa's constitution to allow for the confiscation of white-owned land without compensation... as was done in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The Honourable Mr Malema has a long-standing commitment to taking land (or houses or cars, etc) without compensation. In 2016 he told his supporters he was "not calling for the slaughter of white people -- at least for now." The policy was a key factor in new president Cyril Ramaphosa's platform after he took over from the incredibly corrupt Jacob Zuma in February.

In introducing the motion, Mr Malema called white farmers "criminals", and said "the time for reconciliation is now over. Now is the time for justice!" Justice for white South African farmers will look something like this.

"We must ensure that we restore the dignity of our people without compensating the criminals who stole our land," said the Honourable Mr Malema. The ruling ANC's rural affairs minister "There is no doubt about it, land shall be expropriated without compensation."

One small point that neither speaker addressed was the likely effect on South Africa's agricultural output. Ernst Roets, the deputy chief executive of civil rights group Afriforum, said the motion was a violation of agreements made at the end of apartheid. "This motion is based on a distorted image of the past," he explained. "The term 'expropriation without compensation' is a form of semantic fraud. It is nothing more than racist theft."

Freedom Front Plus party leader Pieter Groenewald said the decision to strip white farmers of their land would cause "unforeseen consequences that is not in the interest of South Africa." Leaving aside the grammatical lapse (for which we'll forgive Mr Groenewald since his first language is Afrikaans), he is wrong only in his use of the word "unforeseen". It is easy to foresee that this will all end badly, just as it has in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

A classic paradigm of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting to get a different result. By that definition, the decision taken by South Africa's parliament last week is indeed insane.

Further reading:
"South Africa's Farmers Look North for Opportunities", Ventures Africa, 20/11/12. And [Walt adds] where might "north" be? Answer: Zambia, Zimbabwe and other places which chased out the "white settlers" and are now begging them to come back!
"Trump is Petitioned for White Farmers From South Africa to Come to U.S. As Refugees", Absolute Truth from the Word of God, 2/3/18. Includes link to petition which you can (and should!) sign.

Zimbabwe: Tyrant quits, tyranny continues

So, farewell then, Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe, former President-for-Almost-Life of Zimbabwe. Reports from Hahaharare (the fun capital of Africa) say that you submitted your resignation, in writing no less, just as impeachment proceedings got under way this afternoon. By quitting now, you dodged a bullet... literally.

It has come to my attention that there were some readers who didn't get the joke in the meme that accompanied my post on Comrade Bob's dismissal, just a few weeks ago, from the position of World Health Organization Goodwill Ambassador created for him by the incredibly naive (or corrupt?) Chair of that "organization". To understand both that and the last line of the first paragraph, be advised that in chiShona, the main native language of Zimbabwe, "Hendiende!" means "I will not go!"

"I will not go!" was Comrade Mugabe's attitude even after his own ZANU-PF party fired him as its President following a military quasi-coup late last week. On Friday he read, rather haltingly, a statement saying he would "preside" (as a president does) over a party congress scheduled for next month. On Sunday he called a cabinet meeting for Tuesday morning, and "presided" over the handful of ministers who turned up. Meanwhile, on Monday, his own party launched in Zimbabwe's Parliament a motion to impeach him, which was being debated today when he finally said that he would go, after all.

Many observers, including Walt -- and let me remind you that I spent several years in the land of bambazonke -- assumed that there were only two ways Robert Mugabe would be dislodged from his position. Either he would die in his bed or in some other location, due to a severe case of lead poisoning. It was only a question of which would come first. His resigning in writing may reflect the way the world has changed in the 21st century. Yes, even Africa. There was no storming of State House, no being hung upside down from a lamppost, no execution by firing squad, not even a quiet private hanging. The coup was bloodless and, apart from the singing and dancing in the streets, quiet.

Does this mean that the povo -- the poor people of Zimbabwe -- can expect to see some improvement in their lives? Under Comrade Bob, the former Rhodesia went from being Africa's breadbasket to another African basket case. His legacy is a standard of living, an average life expectancy and an average annual income all lower than they were in the bad old days of "white settler rule".

He will be remembered for the kleptocracy which impoverished his people, for the Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland in the 1980s, for the farm invasions of the 1990s and later, and for the brutal repression of the opposition any time it seemed at all close to winning an election.

Mr Mugabe's place is like to be taken by Emmerson Mnangagwa, aka ED Mnangagwa [no relation! Ed.], the vice-president whom Comrade Bob purported to fire, earlier this month, to pave the way for the succession of his wife, Gucci Grace. As Western governments rush to congratulate Zimbabwe on its peaceful transition, they forget that Comrade ED was deeply involved in most of those crimes.

Mr Mnangagwa is known as "The Crocodile", for his association with a group of black nationalist rebels in the early days of the fight against white rule. Others say the appellation stems from his power, ruthlessness and ability to survive the tough, sometimes aggressive world of African politics. We all know how crocodiles deal with their enemies, right?

The 75-year-old was a loyal henchman to Comrade Bob for years, gaining a reputation for being astute, ruthless and effective. He was was one of those who helped the dictator cling to power when, at times, it seemed as if his grip might be weakening. As Zimbabwe's Minister for National Security, he became notorious for overseeing the Gukurahundi -- the brutal 1983 campaign against supporters of Comrade Mugabe's rival, Joshua Nkomo. Between 10,000 and 20,000 Ndebele people are estimated to have died in Matabeleland during what was really a tribal war. A good deal of the killing was done by the the Zimbabwe army's Fifth Brigade, equipped and trained by North Korea.

Since then, Comrade ED has kept himself busy in various government positions, most recently as one of two vice presidents. Nor has he been averse to accepting the rewards of his hard work. He is rumoured to have amassed a considerable fortune and been involved in the development (read: looting) of the Marange diamond fields, in which something like 15 billion dollars is said to have disappeared. Mr Mnangagwa was targeted by US sanctions in the early 2000s, for undermining democratic development in Zimbabwe, and he was named in a United Nations investigation into exploitation of mineral resources in Congo.

A former UK foreign secretary told Sky News, "The negative is he's got a lousy record - he was involved in the very serious massacres in the Matabeleland a long, long time ago. His succession, if that's what happens, would be a continuation of the status quo.". Prominent Zimbabwean opposition politician David Coltart (a really decent human being) tweeted, "We have removed a tyrant but not yet a tyranny." Or, to put it the way they do in neighbouring Moçambique: a luta continua!

Further reading: "Poor Robert Mugabe", by Hannes Wessels, in Taki's Magazine, 17/11/17.

Hundreds of Zimbos* fall for joke employment offer

Assiduous readers will know that Walt spent some years, before the turn of the century, knocking around Zimbabwe (the Rhodesia that was), watching a state becoming a failed state, before my very eyes. Almost everyone I knew there has since departed the country, or departed this life entirely So, to keep up with the news from the Dark Continent, I rely on my old chum, Dr CZ, who writes the second part of "Cabinet Files" in the Financial Gazette, every Thursday. It is Dr CZ who calls his compatriots "Zimbos", *meaning "Zimbabweans", nothing more or less.

In last week's column, Dr CZ invited Zimbos interested in assisting him in carrying out a strategic survey that he was planning to undertake to contact him as a matter of urgency. Here is the notice which appeared at the end of the column.

"This is very urgent. Dr CZ is looking for six Zimbos out there who are willing to help him with some strategic research that he will be conducting in the next few days. It is a three-day contract. Over and above being provided with transport, accommodation and meals, the assistants — who should be holders of at least any tertiary qualification — will each be paid an allowance of US$800 per day. The contract days are from the 29 to 31 of this month. Anyone interested should urgently e-mail their name and contact number to the e-mail below. The offer is strictly on a first-come-first-served basis."

The column appeared on February 23rd, and readers will note that the contract on offer was to run "from the 29 to 31 of this month". The joke should have been obvious to anyone who learned "30 days hath September...", but it seems post-colonial Zimbabwean education does not include any reference to that little saying. This week, Dr CZ reports on the aftermath, as follows...

"Although Dr CZ had just asked for those interested to submit their names and contact numbers for the piece of work that was to take place between February 29 and 31, as late as at the time of going to print this March, desperate emails were still trickling into his mail-box… most of them accompanied with bulky CVs and several phone numbers and dozens of the applicants are holders of several post graduate degrees. It was one of Dr CZ’s many asinine pranks that many of his fans took seriously. What was intended to start and end as just harmless mischief has turned out to be a real survey. The results of the survey show what happens when people become hopelessly desperate.

"If the applicants were mere village yokels who could hardly tell their left from right, one would have assumed that none of them knew that the dates on which the survey was supposed to take place do not exist on this side of the rainbow yet, but these are very educated men and women whose basic commonsensical reasoning has since been evaporated by the dire personal situations they find themselves in.

"Most of these people could be fathers and mothers, whom entire clans look upon. Yet they cannot do anything about their situation. This explains why seemingly normal people end up doing things that people in normal situations would not think possible. This perpetuates the abnormality that this country is increasingly getting known to be. This is the sad reality of the situation that this country has deteriorated to… never mind what officialdom says."

Quite right. 37 years after the perfidious British sold out Ian Smith's "white settler regime" to the darker-complected Africans, Zimbabwe has become a basket case... with the bottom now on the verge of falling out of the basket. With every passing day, Zimbabwe gets worse and worse. The Dark Continent gets ever darker.

Further reading: "Mugabe's corpse could win next Zimbabwe election, widow-to-be says", WWW 18/2/17.

Mugabe's corpse could win next Zimbabwe election, widow-to-be says

Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe, Past-Present-and-Future President of the People's Republic of Zimbabwe, turns 93 next week. "Uncle Bob" has ruled Zimbabwe ever since the perfidious British handed the peaceful and prosperous country known as Rhodesia over to the black majority in 1980. He has never been officially declared President For Life, but that's how things have turned out. Now his second wife, Grasping Grace, says his reign will continue, even if (as most Zimbabweans wish) he dies.

Speaking on Thursday at a party rally in a dorp called Buhera, Zimbabwe's First Lady suggested that even if her husband's corpse is put on the ballot paper for elections due in 2018, people would still vote for him. The lovely and fragrant Grace has in the past made numerous controversial suggestions regarding Comrade Bob's 37-year rule, at one point claiming he will rule Zimbabwe from the grave or from a wheelchair, whichever comes first!

Mr Mugabe was one of the ruling Zanu-PF party's biggest strengths, his widow wannabe said. "Our first strength is in President Mugabe. Even if we go anywhere people will respect him," she said, adding even children were aware of his importance. "You hear people accusing me of still wanting to continue as the First Lady of this nation," she went on, "saying that is why I don't want to tell the President to retire. I am not the only one who voted for him. Only a fool will say that. We will field a candidate of a corpse on the ballot if God takes Mugabe and people will vote for him just to show how much the President is loved."

After the thunderous applause from the Zanu-PF supporters (Sid and Doris Moyo) died down, Grace added, "Let's wait for God's time when He decides that Mugabe should stop and then we enter into the race. But one thing you must not forget is that if you don't have Mugabe's support it will be difficult for you."

Walt, who lived in Zimbabwe for some time back in the day, would add that life itself will be difficult for the people of that unfortunate country, no matter who's squatting in the State House bequeathed to the ruler by the evil whites. Mother Africa always wins.

African terrorists kidnapping schoolkids - 1973 version

In "Nigerian schoolgirls: we've seen this movie before -- literally!", I said the saga of the kidnapping of nearly 300 schoolgirls by Boko Haram -- did I mention they're militant Islamists? -- reminded me of an incident depicted in The Gods Must Be Crazy.

Agent 3, who lived in that part of the world for some years, tells me I could have done much better. The plot of the 1980 movie, he says, drew heavily on an actual kidnapping on the night of 5 July 1973. ZANLA terrorists fighting for the "liberation" of Rhodesia abducted 292
people -- almost the same number as were taken in Nigeria -- mainly children, from St. Albert’s Mission near Centenary.

Click here to read the Wikipedia article on the Rhodesian Bush War. Under what the black terrorists called the "white settler regime", Rhodesia was the second-most prosperous country in sub-Saharan Africa, after the Republic of South Africa, which coincidentally was also run by the white minority. Many Rhodesians were concerned that "majority rule" would bring chaos, as resulted when the Belgian Congo was decolonized in 1960.

The Bush War involved counter-insurgency operations by the Rhodesian Security Forces against two rival terrorist gangs, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) and the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA). In July 1973, ZANLA cadres, trained and supported by the Maoist Frelimo forces in Mozambique, attacked the school at St. Albert's Mission between Centenary and Mount Darwin in July 1973 and abducted 292 pupils and staff, whom they force-marched north into the Zambezi valley towards their base in Mozambique. This true story is almost exactly that told in The Gods Must be Crazy.

The terrorists were intercepted by the Rhodesian Security Forces, albeit without the assistance of the movie's bumbling but brave biologist. All but eight of the children and staff were recovered. Similar abductions were repeated over the following years and the security forces found themselves increasingly unable to prevent them.

The captured schoolchildren would be marched to ZANLA bases in Mozambique where they would undergo "political 're-education'" and guerrilla training. No mention is made of the girls being forced into marriage with the guerrillas, or worse, but unlike in Nigeria, the ZANLA terrorists were not Islamic fundamentalists.

Further reading: The St. Albert's Mission kidnapping is mentioned along with other incidents which occurred in Rhodesia in the months of July, 1890 through 1978, in the July 2013 edition of Contact! Contact!, a publication of the Rhodesian Services Association Inc. The online newsletter has all kinds of interesting factoids, photos, and Rhodie stuff for sale, so if you (like Agent 3) have some connection with the great country that has now become the far-from-great Zimbabwe, check it out.

Blaming the white settlers for the plight of black Africa

In yesterday's post about the correlation between race and poverty -- the poorest countries on earth being overwhelmingly in black (sub-Saharan) Africa -- I anticipated the hoary left liberal argument that it's all the fault of the colonists.

Here's what the revisionist historians and lamestream media keep telling us.
The British, French and others took all the resources and left nothing behind.
They drew "national boundaries" without regard to linguistic, cultural and, errr, tribal differences.
They imposed on Africa systems of social organization and government which are "unsuitable" to Africans. Like democracy.

Let me just relate my own personal observations of southern Africa.

I first visited Zimbabwe in the days when it was still Rhodesia. The status of the country, in 1968-9 when I was there, was disputed. Its white government  -- called "the white settler regime" by the Western (and Communist) media -- declared independence from Britain on 11 November 1965. We can run our own affairs, they told the Brits. There was a precedent for this course of action, set back in... wait for it... 1776, by a country which has gone on to achieve considerable stature in the world.

Why would the rest of the world not recognize Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence? The problem was race. Of course. The founding fathers of the USA were white. And they kept black slaves, or at least some of them did. But the white folks were in the majority of the Thirteen Colonies, so everything was OK, except perhaps with George III and Lord North.

The government of Ian Smith  was similarly composed of white men. They (or their families) came to their country from Britain and did what they could to develop the land and the people they found there. Unlike Washington and Jefferson, though, they did not keep slaves.

Unfortunately for the white Rhodesians, they comprised only about 1% of the population at the time of UDI. Thus the Smith government was inevitably and always referred to as "the white minority regime".

"Africa for Africans" was the slogan shouted incessantly following Harold Macmillan's "Winds of Change" speech, which signalled Britain's loss of will to govern its colonies. "We're tired," said the Brits. "Let the Africans look after themselves."

What was wrong with "Africa for Africans"? The "white tribes" of Rhodesia and South Africa were quick to point out that they were Africans too -- not just by adoption or settlement, but by birth, with family histories in Africa going back in some cases to the 17th century.

So, the liberals and those bent on the destruction of the West changed the party line to "Africa for the real Africans", meaning the blacks. Well, OK, coloureds too. And maybe Asians. Everyone except the honkies.

Rhodesia was the second-last of the white dominoes to fall. The Portuguese  gave up on Moçambique and Angola in the 70s. South Africa finally succumbed to "majority rule" in 1994. The British betrayed their kith and kin and Rhodesia, effectively selling out to Comrade Robert Mugabe and his terrorist buddies in 1980.

When I visited Rhodesia in 1968-9, there was a small but healthy economy, growing in spite of illegal international sanctions. The country was more than self-sufficient in food, a net exporter to the rest of the continent. The Rhodesian dollar was worth around two US dollars. The major cities (Salisbury, Bulawayo and Umtali) had electricity and clean water, and were connected by well-maintained paved highways. There was a small but reliable airline. Schools and hospitals provided all Rhodesians -- black and white -- with education and health care unmatched in any of the "black countries" to the north.

All this -- the thriving economy, the modern infrastructure, the lot -- was the work of the "evil white settlers". This was the legacy the "racist colonialists" handed over to Mugabe and his henchmen.

By the time I returned to Zimbabwe, as Rhodesia was renamed, in 1992, the capital city (now called "Harare") was in a state of decay. It has got worse still in the 20 years since. You can't drink the water now. Electricity is intermittent. Air Zimbabwe exists only to fly Comrade Bob to hospitals and shopping malls in other parts of the world. The roads are crumbling. Traffic lights have been stolen for the scrap value of the metal frames.

Hospitals are short-staffed and virtually without equipment or even medicines. The educational system is a shambles. The economy, which all but collapsed with the Zimbabwe dollar, is actually shrinking, and has never matched its pre-independence levels. And as land seized from white farmers lies idle, hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans are starving.

Who is responsible for the plight of today's Zimbabwe? The government has been in the hands of "the majority" -- actually a "majority" of just one man -- for nearly 33 years. A perusal of The Economist's Pocket World in Figures reveals the country as a basket case. It is going back to bush, and that's a fact! It's also a fact that it wasn't the "evil white settlers" -- most of whom are gone now -- who built the basket.

Zimbabwe's wounds are, like those of the rest of Africa, self-inflicted. The "real Africans" got their hands on the "white houses and white cars" they coveted, and they have made their country "really African".

Picture credit: The image of Ian Smith is taken from a cover of Time magazine. Mr. Smith died in 2007.

Book review: The Fear

Knowing of Walt's interest in Zimbabwe -- one of the poorest and most misruled countries in the world -- Agent 17 asked if I'd yet read The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe, by Peter Godwin. I replied that I hadn't, and immediately hied myself off to the local library where I was pleased to find it and a surprising number of other books on Rhodesia and its miserable successor.

Before 17's reminder I hadn't been in a big hurry to get Godwin's book, because I knew of the family and their white liberal, Stephen Clarksonish sympathies. Peter Godwin's parents -- father a Jew, mother not -- came out to Rhodesia after WWII, as did many other Brits who were nothing back in Old Blighty and aspired to be bwanas in British Africa.

Although their children -- Peter and his younger sister Georgina -- went to the right (white) schools and enjoyed the privileges of little baases and medems, they quite unaccountably acquired "red socks", becoming admirers of all things black and haters of the white society of their country. Some Americans would have called them "nigger-lovers".

Predictably, they sympathized with the black terrorists during the bush war of the 70s, and rejoiced at the coming of independence and majority rule. Only later did Peter learn that Comrade Bob's idea of "one man one vote" is that he's the man and his is the vote. The scales fell off Peters's ideas during the Gukurahundi ("ethnic cleansing") in Matabeland in 1983. It was then that he found himself on the wrong side of Mugabe's law, and "gapped it" to greener -- or less black -- pastures.

His sister, Georgina, took a little longer to realize that a dictator is a dictator, no matter whether black or white. She was a spokesperson for Bob's régime until the mid-90s, a bingo-caller on the state-owned radio/TV network -- Zimbabwe's one and only -- until the mid-90s. Peter spends a lot of time, in The Fear, talking about his adorable sister, but modestly omits this little smudge on her résumé.

To get to the book... In April 2008, when it appeared that the MDC (the opposition party led by Morgan Tsvangirai) had won a badly-rigged presidential election and was set to oust Mugabe from power, Peter and his addled sister decided to return to Zimbabwe from their comfortable homes in, errr, New York and London, to record the dramatic reversal of the country's fortunes which was sure to follow.

Things didn't quite turn out that way. In Africa, you can't lose an election. The worst you can do -- in Zimbabwe at least -- is tie. So, while the Godwins were interviewing victims of Mugabe's pre- and post-election violence, Tsvangirai settled for the position of Prime Minister in a Government of National Unity (GNU). Mugabe retained the presidensity and the only key to State House. The GNU, of course, has turned out to be a complete farce, which is why Zimbabweans say no GNUs is good GNUs. Comrade Bob clings to power, and will do so until someone or something does for him.

About half of The Fear is a catalogue of horrific examples of Bob's brutal and relentless campaign against the MDC and all who would oppose him. The details of torture, rape, pillage and murder make gruesome reading. Peter Godwin deserves credit for recording these stories and naming names of victims and perpetrators alike. That part of the book should be read (but not while eating) to appreciate the enormity of Bob's crimes against the humanity. Walt hopes that one day he will be brought to trial, which is exactly what he now fears.

The Fear would be a lot better if an editor had excised the other half of the book, which is given over to little anecdotes about how cute and precious Peter's children and sister are. Sample: "Georgina is tapping at her netbook, which is covered in leopard-print laminate and coordinates with her blouse."

We also learn that Georgina once made love in the open air on top of Cecil Rhodes's grave while rainbow skinks watched, that she gave birth to a daughter named Xanthe and planted a tree on top of the placenta. TMI. Skip over those parts.

You should also ignore Peter's proclivity for hyperbole. He plays fast and loose with numbers. Example: "...up to 700,000 were left homeless". The weasel words there are "up to".

Walt also found annoying the white liberal bias that is still evident in Godwin's writing. He calls the pre-1994 government of South Africa, "the apartheid authority". And Rhodesia was under "white settler rule", not the Ian Smith government. Never mind that the Godwins were themselves white settlers. And never mind that Ian Smith was right, a fact which the author can't bring himself to acknowledge.

Read The Fear anyway for a good explanation of how Mugabe won the 2008 election after all, and insight into how African democracy works. Not.

Better off in Rhodesia than Zimbabwe

For those a little hazy on African geography, Rhodesia and Zimbabwe refer to the same land mass at different points in history. Welcome to the 4th dimension.

Rhodesia was the name given to the country settled by white, British pioneers around the turn of the 20th century. It was named after the legendary Cecil Rhodes, the man with the vision of British Africa -- and a railway to unite it -- extending from the Cape to Cairo.

Later Rhodesia was divided. When the British lost the will to maintain their empire/commonwealth, Northern Rhodesia became Zambia. Southern Rhodesia resisted black rule, and declared independence from the U.K. on November 11, 1965.

The next 15 years, now known as the UDI period, saw illegal (and largely ineffective) UN sanctions against the government led by Ian Smith, and a vicious terrorist war waged by "Africans" -- black Africans, that is -- against the "settlers" -- white Africans, that is -- from bases in Mozambique and Zambia. It was during this time that I first visited Rhodesia.

The Rhodesians, betrayed by their kith and kin in Britain and dismayed by loss of support from South Africa and Portugal, were finally coerced into accepting "majority rule" in 1980. At that time Rhodesia was renamed Zimbabwe and power was handed over to Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe, as he is still called in official documents and the sycophantic state-run media.

Zimbabwe is now governed by the principle of "one man one vote"...the one man being Comrade Bob, who has clung tenaciously to power ever since, despite being aged at least 85 and appearing to have somewhat lost the plot. As for the country, the once breadbasket of Africa has become a basket case.

I wish I had a dollar for every time a Zimbabwean said to me "Things were better in the old days." Or "It's too bad you [meaning whites] aren't still running things." That sentiment resonates even more loudly today, according to a recent article by Nicolas D. Kristof in The New York Times.

"Postcard from Zimbabwe" is well worth reading for a true picture of the life of the ordinary "Joe Povo" under Comrade Bob's despotic rule. Thanks to Agent 17 for drawing my attention to it.

Self-rule: the curse of sub-Saharan Africa

Following World War II, the colonial powers lost their will to rule Africa. The first indicator was British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's "Winds of Change" speech, made to the parliament of South Africa on February 3, 1960. "We're pulling out" pretty well sums up what Macmillan said.

And so the British pulled out, followed quickly by the French and Belgians, then the Spanish (never a big power in Africa in any case) and, after the Communist overthrow of the Salazar government, the Portuguese. After the Portuguese abandoned Angola and Mozambique, it was inevitable that Rhodesia would fall, and finally fortress South Africa.

So ended white man's rule in sub-Saharan Africa. The world, in a fit of liberal guilt, welcomed self-rule by the black majority. Warnings that the continent would go "back to bush" were ignored. What has happened since?

Readers who don't know that Africa is now worse off than it was in the bad old colonial days should read Architects of Poverty: Why African Capitalism Needs Changing, by Moeletsi Mbeki, a relative of former South African president Thabo Mbeki. Parts of it were published on July 1st in the Johannesburg Star under the headline "Colonised by the black elite".

"Nationalism in Africa has always paraded itself as a movement of the people fighting for their liberation," Mbeki says. "The reality is rather different." He points out that "African nationalism" (read "terrorism") was the preserve of a small, Westernised, black elite fighting for their place at the colonial trough. He argues that their record in power has been spectacularly damaging.

Mbeki gives the example of Zimbabwe where, once the Communist-inspired ruling party (they still call each other "comrade") consolidated its hold on power, "the ZANU-PF political elite proceeded to enrich itself to the great detriment of the national economy and of the welfare of the population at large."

Such actions have ensured that most Africans in sub-Saharan Africa are poor and getting poorer, Mbeki says. He quotes statistics from the World Bank and US National Bureau of Economic Research to show that:
* 36% of the region’s population lives in economies that in 1995 had not regained the per capita income levels first achieved before 1960 (i.e. while they were still colonies);
* another 6% are below levels first achieved by 1970, 41% below 1980 levels and 11% below 1990 levels;
* only 35 million people reside in nations that had higher incomes in 1995 than they had ever reached before.

When Walt was in Zimbabwe, he heard many older Africans decry the oppression of the black chefs and wish aloud for the return of Ian Smith. But the foreign governments who conspired to push the white man out of Africa didn't want to hear that, and still refuse to believe that black self-rule -- let's say self-misrule -- has been the disaster which these figures prove.

Mr. Mbeki's book should be required reading for all those who still think Africans are capable of governing themselves. This is not racism. This is realism!