Old Africa, Same Old Politics

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe is not getting with the program.

This week he insulted Johnnie Carson, US assistant secretary of state for African affairs with the terms "an idiot".

Mr Mugabe told the state-owned Herald newspaper in Zimbabwe that his first meeting with a US government official for many years had angered him. "You would not speak to an idiot of that nature," he said. "I was very angry with him, and he thinks he could dictate to us what to do and what not to do."

"We have the whole of SADC working with us, and you have the likes of little fellows like Carson, you see, wanting to say: 'You do this, you do that. Who is he? I hope he was not speaking for Obama. I told him he was a shame, a great shame, being an African American."

Mr Mugabe apparently also took exception to Mr Carson's predecessor, Jendayi Frazer. In May last year he described her as "a little American girl trotting around the globe like a prostitute" after she suggested that the then-opposition Movement for Democratic Change had won the disputed presidential election.

President Obama has got his work cut out in Africa ..... colour only goes so far with the African "Big Man".

Cholera stalks Africa

I mentioned in an earlier blog that getting Mugabe out of power would a bit more than problematic, despite votes against him at home and condemnations abroad ..... well here we are some months later and Mugabe is still in power, despite losing an election, reneging on a forced power sharing scheme, and every other cop out that SADC could devise.

Now comes the news that the country has collapsed to the state that the scourge of Cholera now stalks southern Africa, with well over 600 deaths (probably double that or more) in Zimbabwe and outbreaks in other countries, as refugees take the illness with them across the borders. Previously it has only been the ruins that comprise the DR Congo, that have threatened to sink to this level of misery after independence.

How low can a country in Africa sink before other Africa leaders admit that its failed?

They still refuse to depose Mugabe, and even when figures suggest that nearly fifty percent of the population are in exile or heading for refugee camps, they will not condemn the criminal incompetence that has destroyed a whole rich country inside twenty five years.

I will not mince my words here, Black Africans politicians are little more than criminals and semi educated scum ..... they are all thieves and tyrants, and Sub Saharan Africa is a basket case, despite the odd 'good news' story.

Maybe we should just abandon the whole continent and leave them to fall back into the tribalism and barbarism that they appear to want.

There is not one, not one single one of these countries, that I would be happy to live in, and I include South Africa in that, as they are only one dictator away from the joining 'African Model'. I have friends in SA who suggest that corruption is increasingly a problem in SA, even at the top with both Mbeki and Zuma under suspicion of taking bribes.

Some more Chickens just came home

I recently posted "When chickens come home to roost", well a few more just clucked again.

Firstly;

• Gordon Browns last act as Chancellor was a slight of hand cancelling the lowest rate of tax collection, which pertained to those on the lowest incomes. At the time he 'buried' it amongst his usual recounting and announcing of the same monies over and over again (a hall mark of his chancellorship), and deferred it for a year. Well guess what, yep the year is up, and over thirty labour MP's in marginal seats (and they are trailing 14 points in the polls) signed an early day motion, calling on the new chancellor to cancel the move. Its predicted by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, that with all the changes in the income tax, national insurance and tax credit, about 5.3 million families will lose out overall. Oops!

This government has often claimed that its endless tax hikes were "For hard working families" and to "Protect the environment", which added to their mantra that "Immigration is good for the UK", form the 'holy trinity' of Gordon Browns government policy.

Given that my first point shows that, a lot of low paid and hard working people are going to suffer an income cut this month, and that a high court judge has very publically said that all New Labours social policies have either failed, or done nothing to prevent a social meltdown in the UK, you can assume that Gordon's Gang really don't need the rest of the trinity to be challenged, but no such luck.

Secondly;

• News was released that there would be a drop in world average temperatures this year, which is not so surprising, after all fluctuations are to be expected, but buried within that news, was the fact that there actually hasn't been a temperature rise since 1998. Now, I have questioned the evidence of human driven global warming before, but I had accepted that there were in fact increases occurring, whatever the agent of those changes. Now however, I am less convinced than ever. There has also been new reports on the sun not being linked to this non change in temperatures.

However my key question is, why are we simply not just coming out of the medieval mini ice age?
After all Chaucer wrote of wine vineyards in Durham and Northern England, and we are not at that temperature level yet. According to Henry Ansgar Kelly in his book "Chaucer and the Cult of Saint Valentine" wine was grown 300 miles north of its current limit in the UK.
So what are we paying all these extra "Green taxes" for, especially as I have already predicted that the world will end in 2050AD?

Thirdly;

• In a hard hitting report, the claim that immigration has been good for the UK was totally debunked by a House of Lords committee, who reported that 'Record levels of immigration' have had "little, or no impact" on the economic well-being of native Britons. This came on top of an expose that once again the UK citizenship tests were being criminally abused. So the Government is still presiding over a system of open doors immigration into the UK, where the citizenship test is being taken by criminals, false marriages are still taken at registry offices, and its actually costing us money because of the ever increasing welfare drains. Apparently we still don't count the 'dependents' of 'arranged' marriages as immigrants ...... this is just basically a giant fraud perpetrated on the British People by this government.

Finally, in a little irony, I wrote about both Tibet and China, as well as mentioning Zimbabwe in that first chickens blog, and I said that China was a cruel communist state, not cuddly Olympic hosts, and that Bjork had cried out for "Tibet Tibet" in a concert in China. Sadly within a week Tibetans were dying for the freedom of their country.

I also jokingly suggested that the South African electricity crisis might be the final straw for Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe - and lo and behold, it looks like he has been voted out of office (although getting him out is a bit more problematic).

Nostradamus eat your heart out!

Don't mess with this blog dictators and zealots, I have the power!

Update .... I don't have power ... Mugabe is still in power

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Zimbabwe

There is a Zimbabwe exiles blog that calls on Britain to invade Zimbabwe. Its actually rather a sad blog because its largely exiles planning for a day that’s maybe never going to come, but this blog reminded me that some many years ago I met a Ugandan who was driving an illegal taxi in Manchester (UK). We got chatting about African politics and Uganda as he drove me home, and he suddenly said something that has stuck with me over the years. He said that “It was wrong of the whites to leave so early, we weren’t ready”.

When I asked what he meant, he said that there should have been “A longer run up to independence in Uganda, with more skilled Africans trained into the Judiciary, Civil Service, Police and Military”. He went on to expand on this, he was obviously keen to get things off his chest, and said that “The interim government should have been five years or more, with the first two elections, supervised whilst still under British overall control, to ensure the rules were stuck to”.

He then added “But most of all, the police should have remained under British control, and we should have been told we didn’t need an army as the British Army was staying to ”protect” Uganda, not that we needed an army, or protecting from any one except our own army”.

I forget which African strong man was in charge of Uganda at the time, it could have been Idi Amin, or Milton Obotoe, or one of the others, but his charge was that they had all squandered and stolen the resources that had been there upon independence, and let down the hopes of a nation.

His basic argument was that with no native Military, and the Police and Judiciary supervised by the UK, democracy would have stuck from the start, and the constitution obeyed by all parties. And, that by not wasting money on unneeded armies; money would have been spent on education, medicine and infrastructure.

In reality this wasn’t practicable, especially given the anti-colonial sentiments in both Africa and the West at the time. But when you look at the mess that the vast majority of African nations got into after independence, maybe he had a point for all of the new states and not just Uganda.

I haven’t thought about this conversation for some years, and I am afraid that like many I have just written the whole continent off as a basket case, with Zimbabwe just being the latest example, but I wonder how it would have all turned out “if only..” Britain and France had come up with a joint plan for correcting inappropriate borders (those that split tribes), and insisting on acting as military guarantors of the constitution for each newly independent states?

It’s too late now, and asking for any white military force to go in and correct an abhorrent African regime is just whistling into the wind. There is still an Anti colonial lobby on the left wing of the UK, who would bring down the New Labour regime if Blair tried to use military force, so even if he has thought about it, he has not dared risk it.

I am afraid that the Zimbabweans are stuck with the old dictators club aka the African Union or the UN, aka the Chinese oil exploration authority, for any hope in Zimbabwe. In reality this means that nothing will happen, and until and unless South Africa feels threatened, nothing will be allowed to happen. With the news that Mugabe intends to run for election until he dies, that is the only hope they have, that he dies of old age.

It will be a very long time, if ever, before Zimbabwe fully recovers from the damage. All the farm infrastructure has been destroyed, the farmers dispersed, and capital goods (tractors etc) gone, and livestock diseased or eaten. Even just repairing the broken fences will cost millions.

Their country has effectively been destroyed, and will never regain the chances lost, because even if Mugabe’s regime collapses, all the squatters, veterans, activists etc will still be there, and no one will be able to control them. It would need a military government just to protect people, let alone enforce the courts orders.

I guess I am being ultra pessimistic, but I suspect that when Mugabe’s party lose power, they will revert back to guerrilla violence to get it back, and this brings us back to “if only ….”

Update: TuTu calls for action on Zimbabwe - yep its got worse and guess who got a hero's welcome at the latest meeting of the African Union? Yes our 'hero' and yours Robert Mugabe!