One week from today thirty years of Zimbabwe could be discarded and a new age for this beautiful, resource-rich country could begin. Or not.
A week from today is the first election in more than thirty years with a serious potential of being free and fair. Even so, the brainwashed generation-plus of Zimbabweans who have never enjoyed being free might be too scared to try it, now. And then there’s the army. Will they allow free results that diminish their power?
What do the leaders of Zimbabwe, South Africa and the U.S. have in common?
In South Africa, today, the first real action to oust President Jacob Zuma is expected after at least 5-6 years of planning to do so. In Zimbabwe the destructive dictator Robert Mugabe who was ousted by a coup last November may be on the way back!
And in the U.S.? Neither Zimbabwe or South Africa provide as much surprise and contrast to the past as Donald Trump in the White House. Impeachment by the book is simple; by historical standards a slam dunk. But the chances of impeaching Donald Trump are about as great as winning the super lottery. So why is it so hard to get rid of these monsters?
Each constantly starved for attention, an American and an African leader in DAVOS today separately made news with their patently disingenuous pitches: the American Trump that he wants free trade, and Zimbabwe’s Mnangagwa that he wants free elections.
Nobody believed either. So what’s the point?
Summer is coming with a vengeance to Zimbabwe. The sky builds with rain.
Only ten days after the fall of Mugabe Zimbabwe trembles. The new regime born mostly of the old vies with long-suppressed and long-stoked groups each ready to kill one another.
First indications are that the new president, the former vice president and close double-crossed Mugabe confidante, is having a very hard time.
The #MeToo campaign is sweeping across Africa, just as GOP “just-say-no” techniques have infused the failed Kenyan opposition and the Chinese governing model takes hold in Zimbabwe.
What we’re seeing is the inception of a single global society. We’re a long way from a single government, but the seeds have been planted.
Germany’s Nazi party was one of the craftiest, most patient political apparatuses ever created. Unable to win a federal election outright it concentrated locally, slowly and assuredly consolidating national power until it was in complete control of Germany by 1933.
Nazis masterfully used democracy to end it. What’s happening today in America, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and many other places is a version of this with one critically important difference. The consequences of not recognizing this are as dire as they come.
Here’s the thing: we should all be upset with USFW’s reversing a ban on importing elephant tusks, but it’s not quite the story you think. As described below I could see a Hillary administration doing the same thing.
What Ryan Zinke did (please let’s stop pinning everything on the moron Donald Trump who doesn’t even know the difference between African and Indian elephants) will definitely set back wildlife conservation in Africa, but in the panoply of so many other anti-conservation actions in the last few years, it’s minor. It’s the panoply which is major, which makes every minor move that much worse.
You need to focus on the facts. Stick with me.
Events are moving quickly in Zimbabwe as the regime changes.
The Army is control. A credible news source, ZimNews, confirms that the President’s wife, Grace Mugabe, despised by the Army and the focal point of the coup, has fled to Namibia.
Emerson Mnangagwa, the vice president “deposed” by Grace several weeks ago, has slipped back into the country and will likely assume power. The 93-year old dictator, Robert Mugabe, is expected to address the country later tonight or tomorrow.
Another two tourists were killed by elephant Saturday.
There are conflicting accounts of the deaths. The official Zambian police report claims that the 57-year old Belgian woman walked “too close” to take photos. But family members of the two killed told the Lusaka Times “the duo were looking at the giant mammals from a distance” and were charged unexpectedly.
In the big scheme of things, here’s why the details matter less than you might think.
I’d love to get a hold of Donald Trump’s Christmas Card list. You can probably name some of the addresses: Philippines, Venezuela and for Africa, Zimbabwe of course. There are more but what’s interesting is that with the exception of North Korea, the leaders of these craziest states all like Trump.
And Donald Trump likes them.
So there are three parts to the story of Scott van Zyl getting eaten by a crocodile last week in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe has collapsed so completely that yesterday the government ordered that all schools accept livestock for any fees from students or suppliers. We’re predating the Enlightenment here.
Yet one sector continues to flourish: hunting.
Read more
“Peace not Progress,” one activist tweeted as planned nationwide protests in Tanzania and Zimbabwe petered out. Both countries are demonstration-free this morning. Both regimes are more powerful than ever. Read more
Not a good idea to be a tourist in Zimbabwe, today. In a still developing situation tourists are stranded and one Australian has been arrested.
Several reports confirm the Australian was waving placards in an anti-government demonstration. Tourists at Victoria Falls are also threatened by an absence of transport and electricity. (Both daily scheduled flights from the falls to Joburg, however, departed mid-day with only minimum delays.)
Serious protests have been growing in Zimbabwe for months and came to a head several days ago when civil servants didn’t receive their scheduled paychecks. It was the third time this year.
They organized a “stay-at-home” day for yesterday. The police reaction was so severe that protests continued into today.
WhatsApp is the principal social media platform in southern Africa, but the Zimbabwe government managed to shut it down late yesterday. Protestors immediately switched to Twitter using the hashtags #ThisFlag, #ShutDownZim, and #ShutDownZimbabwe2016. Twitter now tops its feed with instructions on how to keep using the service as government agents shut down different hashtags.
In typical reticent Zim fashion, even the protestors are being careful if coy. The five main demands being circulated are (1)-Fire corrupt cabinet ministers, (2)-Remove police road blocks, (3)-Pay civil servants on time, (4)-Abandon the bond notes and (5)-Lift the import ban.
The spark was (3)-, the lack of pay for civil servants. In this ruined country where unemployment may be approaching 80% civil servants are the last actively employed group. Until recently their loyalty to the incredibly corrupt government went unchallenged.
Demand (4)- is a complicated issue created by the Zimbabwe Reserve Bank when it announced that by October it would issue “export bond notes” in lieu of a domestic currency. Zimbabwe abandoned its domestic currency seven years ago when inflation exploded and most Zimbabweans use the U.S. dollar.
Many Zimbabweans believe the fancy named currency with its hard-to-imagine restrictions that limit it to purchasing foreign goods is simply an additional way for corrupt officials to reintroduce a local currency. As with the last domestic currency officials manipulated the notes to enrich themselves at the expense of the local population.
Last week the country tightened its ban on imports, ostensibly to spur domestic production although it’s failed miserably. The country until now has survived on goods brought in principally from South Africa, and those are now being stopped at border points.
The interesting thing, of course, is that the population as a whole will likely join the growing protests precisely because of (4)- and (5)-, which if civil servants succeed in getting paid (3)- might likely immediately be reversed.
In effect government concessions on those last three points could quash the protests.
It’s absolutely amazing how much misery Zimbabweans have accepted over the years. It’s now nearly two full generations who have lived under the oppression of Robert Mugabe. The 90+ year-old leader is reported very frail and rarely seen in public. So unfortunately his legacy has held and a body of the politic is readying to replace him.
It’s unclear this protest will do much more than previous ones, particularly if the government scrapes up the cash to pay civil servants. But it’s extremely clear that holidays in Zimbabwe are increasingly ill-advised.
Reading the Inyanga tea leaves, studying the day-old photographs, it appears to me that Robert Mugabe wants to turn control of Zimbabwe over to the Army but just can’t. He just can’t give up the reins of power.
If he did it could avoid more bloodshed but at the same time might even further perpetuate Zimbabwe’s sad oppression. Never in my life has there been a country in Africa so raped of its potential by its self-imposed leaders as Zimbabwe.
The possibility that Zimbabwe’s North Korean-like behaviors and criminal neglect of its educated population, natural beauties and rich natural resources might continue for another generation takes my breath away. It just seems so unfair.
Mugabe is 92 years old and feeble, possibly suffering from dementia. The single greatest indication that the time is nigh is how quickly this week Zimbabwe’s false and always artificial economy started unraveling:
There’s no cash in ATMs. More and more gas stations are closing. Food deliveries are growing scarce.
But Mugabe’s power is so absolute that until a change of power is signaled by him publicly, or until he dies or effectively loses control of reality, those waiting in the background won’t move.
Until recently his wife, a generation younger and allied with the secret police, was arranging a transfer of power from Mugabe to herself. Apparently, though, the old man didn’t approve. She’s fallen from the limelight.
So in stereotypical Cold War, despotic fashion, the sidelines are drawn: the secret police vs. the army. Each desperately wants the old man’s nod, so that they can obliterate the other. They have begun the inevitable posturing.
Waiting for the old man’s nod.
The fictitious political “opposition” which over the last several decades has done little but provide another reality TV show drama is powerless. Citizens of Zimbabwe are so beholden to the system which oppress them that like the citizens of North Korea it’s arguable they have little sense of the outside world.
Which is amazing because unlike North Korea Zimbabwe simply doesn’t have the resources to block the internet, for example. But when the time comes, there is no political opposition organized enough to do anything but present their scarred bodies to more police brutality.
If the old man doesn’t nod and simply fades further away, the secret police will ultimately battle the army and it will be bloody.
For how long? A day? A month? An hour?
No one knows and no one knows who will emerge as the new despot. The shorter the conflict, the more powerful the despot who follows.
The longer the conflict, the more lives lost and resources plundered, the greater the chance the world and especially Zimbabwe’s South African neighbor and benefactor might sit up and do something proper. But I don’t see that happening. I think it will be short and deadly.
And the second generation of a Lost Zimbabwe will begin.
Robert Mugabe is like the feral cat that keeps showing up at the bird feeder.
It goes away for long periods of time and then appears daily, for long periods of time. It looks arthritic as it raises itself out of a pool of sunshine on one day, then pounces on a vole a meter away like a young bunny rabbit.
Whenever it acts the back yard trembles. It always catches something, and you can hear the bones crush as it eats the poor thing whole.
Robert Mugabe has been Zimbabwe’s leader for 35 years. For at least 25 of those he’s been an abject dictator. His main prey: white people, but that’s hardly all that fills his larder.
He’s eaten up virtually every living thing that has opposed him. In this power obsession he’s neglected one of the most beautiful and potentially rich countries on the continent.
Last week for the first time I can determine Zimbabwe media universally criticized his “State of the Union” address. He mumbled, fumbled, fell on the way to the podium, then misread his prepared remarks.
Mugabe’s leading mouthpiece media newspaper, for instance, the “New Zimbabwe,” dared to publish recently:
“While his handlers have insisted the Zanu PF leader is as fit as a fiddle, Mugabe’s body posture show a man very much being dragged to events with his body in evident protest as he struggles to walk.
“The veteran leader’s speeches are now slurred and he uncharacteristically says very little outside the prepared texts.”
Many of us have predicted his demise for years using events like this, or times that he’s shown up at the only modern hospital in the world that will take him (Singapore). A few weeks later he’s smiling at another opponent being cut down.
So summer is ending and another year passes with Robert Mugabe as leader of this beleaguered place. Another round of feisty politicians, hopeful politicians, progressive politicians have been swept out of power leaving little to hope for.
(Where do all these volunteer victims come from?)
The result is a politic totally unknown, a power vacuum or free-for-all looming in the wings.
One day this despicable old man will die. The political landscape he has fashioned is scorched, devoid of possibility. The land he has pillaged for four decades is tired and bleached of its nutrients.
I have been saying for years that little will change when the old man goes. It will take years to reignite the spirit of Zimbabwe in the people who remain there.
If any spirit at all is left.
