More From Zimbabwe

by publius

Today's Post has an excellent, though chilling, account of the Mugabe government's bloody repression of the opposition following the election. I wish I had something more intelligent to say, but the article pretty much speaks for itself. It's revolting -- and infuriating. Here's an excerpt:

On the evening of May 5 -- three days after Mugabe's government finally released the official results of the March 29 election -- 200 Mugabe supporters rampaged through its streets. By the time the militia finished, seven people were dead and the injured bore the hallmarks of a new kind of political violence.

Women were stripped and beaten so viciously that whole sections of flesh fell away from their buttocks. Many had to lie facedown in hospital beds during weeks of recovery. Men's genitals became targets. The official postmortem report on Chaona opposition activist Aleck Chiriseri listed crushed genitals among the causes of death. Other men died the same way.

At the funerals for Chiriseri and the others, opposition activists noted the gruesome condition of the corpses. Some in the crowds believed soldiers trained in torture were behind the killings, not the more improvisational ruling-party youth or liberation war veterans who traditionally served as Mugabe's enforcers.

Comments

[rose]

The other African leaders seem willing to wait the guy out. He's in his 80's, how long can he last? Well, that't true, but his supporters are just as evil, and they will probably seize power when he's gone. It may get much worse before it gets better.

[Nell]

What's the rationale for the 'More' in the post title?

As far as I'm aware, ObWi hasn't featured any posts on Zimbabwe since long before the March 29 elections, in fact since last year sometime, other than the reaction to candidate Hillary Clinton's reference.

[Brick Oven Bill]

The minimum wage for construction union workers in Zimbabwe was
raised to Z$30,000,000 per day on June 1st.

A pound of margarine in the former Rhodesia now costs Z$25,000,000. Consumer prices have been estimated to be doubling every twenty-one minutes.

[OCSteve]

Nell: I think that hilzoy features the horrors going on there regularly. In fact, I can’t think of any blogger besides her who does…

[CMatt]

Nell, although it didn't appear in the first page of results in a default Google search, Hilzoy's http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/03/no-zanu-card-no.html>No ZANU Card, No Mealie Meal post (featured Zimbabwe post, from March) is in later results, or findable via advanced search.

Please accept a gentle admonition for shooting from the hip, as it were, at targets including people sympathetic to your position.

Publius, thanks for the link. Rose's suggestion that Mugabe's supporters will seize power when he's gone should always have been a consideration for the AU - but in the Post's description of events March 30th, Mugabe announced to his inner circle his electoral loss and intentions to step down, and Chiwenga suggested it wasn't entirely his decision to make.

Did the meeting happen that way, and if so was that exchange staged? If the answers are, "Yes" and "No", then it seems reasonable to question how much Mugabe's in control now (and two "Yes" answers would support the contention that it's unlikely to end with him).

[togolosh]

It's clear that when Mugabe finally does kick the bucket there are plenty of equally odious ZANU-PF leaders waiting to take over. The article makes it clear that Mugabe himself was willing to concede (he is in his 80s, after all), but high party officials nixed that since they wanted to hang on to power. I suspect that part of the desire to keep power is the knowledge that with near certainty a loss of ZANU-PF power means a lot of the corrupt leadership will be forced to face either justice or simple retribution.

The only way to avoid major bloodshed surrounding a transition from one party rule to true democracy is to have some sort of truth and reconciliation process set up beforehand. Here is room for some real leadership from South Africa. Unfortunately it looks like the only SADCC country taking a firm stand on Zimbabwe is Botswana, and they aren't exactly in a position to do much more than talk.

[hilzoy]

Nell is partly right. I was writing about Zimbabwe regularly (meaning every couple of months), and had intended to write something about the election in March. It took place just when I was heading to Pakistan, and while I didn't have the world's best internet access, I was checking what was happening, under the mistaken idea that at some point it would become clear, and I would then write about it. (This was during the "when are they going to announce the results?" phase.)

But it just went on and on, and never did become that clear, and then the part of the Pak. trip that involved less internet access started, and eventually the story got away from me.

[Adam]

You know, I'm beginning to feel that maybe the situation in Zimbabwe is not, in fact, analogous to what happened in the U.S. Democratic primary. Perhaps the suggestions to that effect were a bit intemperate.

[Nell]

I did miss the March 'mealie meal' post entirely, so apologies for assuming that the 'more' post title comes out of nowhere.

OCSteve: In fact, I can’t think of any blogger besides her who does.

Few bloggers as widely read, true. But some others have been following events.

For those who want to follow events when the Post isn't covering them, I'd recommend This Is Zimbabwe.

Thabo Mbeki has a lot to answer for.

[PDX Pete]

The article was, indeed, chilling.

A lot more good people will die in Zimbabwe.

Samantha Powers has an article over at Zimbabwe Metro that lays out a path to removing Mugabe.

Pay attention to the Parliament. There seems to be an unstated strategy of killing or arresting enough MDC MPs to give back control to ZANU-PF. It would seem to be a starting point for negotiations: lay off the MDC MPs and obey the constitutional authority of the Parliament.

[GNZ]

it is surprising that any country in southern Africa (besides south Africa itself) is functional considering their life expectancies are in the 30 and may drop into the 20's over the next few decades. the mismanagement of the AIDS crisis is like killing half the population of Southern Africa every generation.

As to Mugabe - I don't think there is any acceptable solution one can reach with Mugabe unless its a trojan horse, besides Mugabe actually has quite a bit of support in Africa - even some countries planning on modeling policies after his.

[Nell]

Here's the article by Samantha Power that PDX Pete mentioned.

[OCSteve]

Nell: Thanks for the links.

[minstrel hussain boy]

i thought that after three tours of vietnam i was well versed in the depravity and cruelty of war.

angola showed me different.

[Lemonade]

I know many here are not fans of Redstate.com, but Pejman Yousefzadeh has had a number of posts on Mugabe and Zimbabwe in the last couple of weeks.

http://www.redstate.com/tags/robert_mugabe

http://www.redstate.com/tags/zimbabwe

[russell]

What can be done?

Thanks -

[Sean M. Brooks]

Dear OC: I trust you are well.

Actually, I have regularly seen discussions of, and condemnations of the tyranny of Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe in other forums. The printed version of NATIONAL REVIEW. Yes, the very same magazine so many liberals here like to bash.

So, Hilzoy and Publius' blogposts or "repostings" here of articles about Zimbabwe for Obsidian Wings is NOT the only place where you can condemnations of Mugabe's tyranny.

Sincerely, Sean

[Gary Farber]

"So, Hilzoy and Publius' blogposts or "repostings" here of articles about Zimbabwe for Obsidian Wings is NOT the only place where you can condemnations of Mugabe's tyranny."

Sean, since no one here has made the completely insane claim that Obsididan Wings is "the only place" where you can find condemnations of Mugabe, it's a mystery as to why you are refuting this claim no one has made.

The only comment that I can even manage to guess that you might be somehow misreading is that Nell wrote above at July 05, 2008 at 04:02 PM that: "As far as I'm aware, ObWi hasn't featured any posts on Zimbabwe since long before the March 29 elections...." This was incorrect, but how you got from that, or anywhere, to the impossible claim that no one on earth has condemned Mugabe, well, how could anyone make such a nonsensical claim?

"Yes, the very same magazine so many liberals here like to bash."

Also, it sometimes has a good font; if you'd like to argue over some statement someone has made about National Review, how about linking to and quoting said statement, so we can have a discussion, rather than seeming to imply that someone, somewhere, at sometime, has said that National Review has never ever printed anything of worth, a claim I'm equally unaware that anyone here has made. Who and what statement are you specifically arguing with, or are you just making up straw men to argue with and bash unnamed "liberals" with, and if so, why?

[Gary Farber]

Sean, rereading, I see that although you didn't quote what you were responding to, you refer to "OC," so I'm guessing that you were responding to this from OCSteve: "Nell: I think that hilzoy features the horrors going on there regularly. In fact, I can’t think of any blogger besides her who does…"

Although this is merely a statement as to whom OCSteve reads, since of course many bloggers write about Zimbabwe, since National Review, printed or otherwise, isn't a blogger, your point's relevance still seems, ah, questionable.

[redwood]

(1) I'd like to see support from the ethnographic record that indigenous populations anywhere in Africa engaged in whole slaughter prior to Leopold.

This is textbook learned behavior.

(2) As long as International Law has as its only criteria for legitimacy the extent to which a government controls the population it claims to govern, we'll continue to see power thristy leaders who are on the ropes strike terror in their populations.

That's the critical condition that to her credit Thatcher tried to complicate, but the USG thrawted her efforts.

"Thabo Mbeki has a lot to answer for."

what a punk.