Off-colour but apposite funny courtesy DeusExMacintosh.
-
Categories
- Academia
- Animals
- anthony daniels
- Art
- Australian internet filter
- Blogging
- Books
- Breastfeeding
- Britain
- Children
- Cricket
- Defence
- Depression
- Drugs
- Economics
- Education
- England
- Entrepreneurs
- Environment
- Equity
- Events
- Fark!
- Feminism
- Free Speech
- Funnies
- General
- Guest Post
- History
- Human/Civil rights
- Immigration
- Insolvency law
- Intellectual property
- Internet
- Law
- Literature
- Marriage
- Media
- Middle east
- Motherhood
- Music
- Northern Ireland
- Personal
- Personal liberty
- Philosophy
- Politics
- Popular culture
- Pregnancy
- Privacy
- Public Policy
- Racism
- Religion
- Restitution
- Science
- science fiction
- scotland
- Site News
- Skeptics
- Society
- Sport
- Taxation
- Technology
- Terrorism
- The Left
- Wales
-
Archives
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
11 Comments
My family is from Zimbabwe. I went there briefly a year ago. Cholera is too good for that bastard.
Hear hear.
Cholera? What is this cholera of which you speak? According to Mugabe it doesn’t exist.
If your family is from Zimbabwe, Paul, perhaps you can explain why South Africa still insists on doing nothing even when their border is being overrun by refugees. It doesn’t make any sense to me … what am I missing?
I don’t understand either – why do they keep making excuses for Mugabe? Mind you, logic isn’t the strong point of the South African govt – they’ve been denying that HIV causes AIDS for years, with disastrous consequences…
A lot of it is based around hostility towards the West. Many Africans are understandably suspicious of the West, and bitter about the days of colonialism. However, in recent times it has turned into a convenient excuse for everything – it’s not the people who want to get rid of Mugabe, it’s “the West” and people who have been brainwashed by them. So for starters, Mbeki would be concerned not to be seen to be siding with the UK and USA against an African ‘leader’ like Mugabe.
In reality, this is today little better than racism – it is more important to reject anything and everything from the West than it is to prevent the murder of thousands and the starvation and death from disease of millions.
Mbeki also goes way back to the 70s and 80s with the ANC, when he was working to build support across Africa to get rid of the (horrible) South African regime. In 1980 Mugabe was a young, progressive, democratic leader and an important and symbolic ally. So I think a lot of Mbeki’s unwillingness to have a real go at Mugabe stems from that period of time.
Ultimately though, I think Mbeki is just a coward and an appeaser. This is the man who finds it easier to say that AIDS doesn’t exist than to confront the problem. So he has never really had the guts to accept there is a real issue in Zimbabwe. In some ways the more of a disaster Zimbabwe is in the short term the better. Maybe if northern South Africa is swamped with cholera patients they will finally get of their arses and do something.
By the way, Mbeki’s political capital in SA is all but spent, and the domestic political forces there who are set to usurp him are likely to be far less tolerant of Mugabe’s continued existence.
What I don’t understand is why the USA and Britain can’t either put a price on Mugabe’s head, or send in one of their numerous elite special forces units to deal with the problem quickly and effectively. They seem quite happy to do it in actual democracies in other parts of the world (mostly South America).
An excellent, market-based libertarian solution. People over at the ALS have been saying this for years.
On your other point, has it not occurred to these people that continued tolerance of this kind of behaviour really does have the effect of making it look like Africans can’t run anything?
Indeed. One of the most challenging issues about Africa is that it generally ran better in every respect other than freedom when it was governed colonially. Zimbabwe, for example, had excellent health, education and agriculture. When I was there last year it was striking how eloquent and well mannered people were, particularly in contrast to South Africa and Zambia.
An interesting moral dilemma – is it better to be governed by a foreign power but healthy, educated and well fed, or governed by your own people but sick, ignorant and starving?
It is also interesting to compare other nations which have gained independence from colonial powers in the 20th century to African nations – India, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, to name but a few, have somehow managed to avoid total disintegration and social disorder. India has even managed to stay democratic. So there is something more than merely the after-effects of colonialism which is holding Africa back.
I was being sarcastic, but there is a serious point to the jibe.
Although there are exceptions like Botswana, Africa — particularly sub-Saharan Africa — is just a mess, and some of it does seem to be cultural. Contrast the HIV+ rate in the Islamic bits (low) with the HIV infection rate elsewhere (astronomical), for example.
Well we could start a fund
I think you mean that India managed to become democratic Paul. Most of the places you mention already had strong political coherences. India was an exception and exceptionally it both did disintegrate and still faces political strife as a result. Thing is it has a much longer tradition of civil stability then Europe does, that counts.
Many of the ex-colonies were deliberately designed to perpetuate civil strife. Of course that wasn’t hard. All you have to do is go back a few centuries to say, the history of Scotland, and you can well-recognize how clanned identities supercede and demolish in advance any nationalist tendencies. That said:
.
.
Yeah partially it’s the ex-slave thing. They’ve identified the West as the ultimate bogeyman and abhor anything to do with it like civil order, central government, elections etc.
Partially it’s that the warlords who profit from chaos and war, um, profit from chaos and war. Partially there are interests that seek African resources and find that arming bandits is less costly than dealing with sovereign states that manage resources in their peoples’ interests.
Partially it’s just a fucking mess!
And also it’s the men. I’ve heard it so often. If the men would just fuck off out of it in Africa the place would improve in lightning time.