While I am on the subject of Mugabe, it is worth illustrating what he and his warped, psychotic ideology have actually done to the former Rhodesia.
We bandy around words like ‘tyrant’ and ‘dictator’ and ‘undemocratic’ but there comes a point when these words, in isolation, no longer have the power to move in the way they should. Altogether more moving, nay profoundly upsetting, is this graphic description from the UK Times of what African marxism is actually doing to this particular corner of Africa:
Zimbabwe is a country rich in resources and with great potential. It used to have a well-oiled infrastructure that even South Africa, with its far bigger economy, envied. It was robust enough to withstand the first two decades of President Mugabe’s rule but it has now reached the point of collapse. An advanced society is returning to the primitive.
It may be too late to reverse or even halt this process now. The damage has been done and, once again, the world is going to be assailed with a stark object lesson in the consequences of state kleptocracy and forced collectivisation. And, once again, those lessons will be rudely ignored, I’ll wager.
In fact, I’ll go further. I’m willing to bet that, even with the pictures of starving Zimbabweans rooting around in the dirt for a few berries are beamed into our homes, our own political leaders will continue to devote their energies to ever-more creative and unscrupulous ways of traducing our property rights and confiscating our earnings. Under the mendacious rubric of ‘social democracy’ Western ‘intellectuals’ will kid themselves that there is a world of difference between their economic philosophies and those of Mugabe. But the difference lies only in degree and the end result differs only in terms of timescale.
But we must neither forget nor forgive. Even while Mugabe is being glad-handed and back-slapped in Paris, we can exact vengeance on behalf of the society he has destroyed. We can do that by committing ourselves single-mindedly to a ferocious and relentless war against the people who would do to us by increment what Mugabe has done to Zimbabweans in swathes.
David,
I fully sympathize with your desire but it does appear you and your fellow Britons have a problem. The state forestalled you. It’s tough to wage ferocious and relentless war against the state–and it IS the state that has done this–without any GUNS. Britain is just one more cautionary tale for Americans who cherish freedom to remember every time they hear some politician say guns need to “be controlled.” They don’t want to control the guns–they want to control the people, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to do that when the only people with guns work for the state. Orwell was a Briton and 1984 was first published over there. Wasn’t anybody listening? How did the country that beat the Nazis come to this pass, where even the right to self-defense is a questionable one in the U.K.? Good luck and may God be with you in getting those rights back because you’ve got an awfully steep uphill battle ahead of you.
I’m a bit puzzled by this ‘well-oiled infrastructure that even South Africa…envied’.
Would that include the strip-roads that could only take one car in one direction at a time? Or the Viscounts that were still flying in the 1980’s? Or the creaky old 1920’s rolling stock inherited from Rhodesia Rail? Or the hand-made cigarette packets of the 1970’s?
Having said that, I think the basic point missed by most commentators is that Zim is still largely a rural country. The vast majority of Shona voters (Zanu-PF to a person) are less affected by the death of the cash economy than most people think.
Yes Viscounts but then they were still running after 20 years of sanctions. So”well oiled” they must have been to be still running.
Beating 20 years of sanctions, being able to sell your products cheap to avoid sanctions has to tell you that the Rhodesians must have been pretty good at what they were doing. Remember, during this time, they also kept Zambia and other surrounding countries alive by sending them maize.
So I really wouldn’t underestimate the fact that Mugabe was handed a robust efficient little economy which, through his corrupt so called marxist idiology, he’s destroyed
Another example of the decline of any country that adopts socialism as a political philosophy.
The fact that this one is under a tyrannical dictatorship, only means that the decline is even quicker than that which can be expected under a ‘so-called’ democratic version, such as proposed by the new EU constitution, and as practised by the majority of EU countries.
Everything that socialism touches it destroys….
David, I wish you luck in rolling back the collectivist consensus in Merry Olde, but the real lesson of Zimbabwe (and Tanzania, also) is that socialism is murder in developing countries. Socialism in developed countries is different problem, however, and free market thinkers need to address both problems with the kind of ferocity you advocate.
Yeah, “as fortold in the prophecy,” I would say. While, I’m not a member of the Ayn Rand fan club, when I learned of Zim’s troubles, I struck me as awfully familiar in the context of Atlas Shrugged.