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Hunting mice while the leader feasts
New Republic via National Post ^ | 2007-03-13 | James Kirchick

Posted on 03/13/2007 5:56:51 AM PDT by Clive

Less than 10 miles from Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's mansion in Harare -- the largest private residence on the African continent -- Cleophus Masxigora digs for mice.

On a good day, he told me, he can find 100 to 200. To capture the vermin, he burns brush to immobilize them, then kills them with several thumps of a shovel. This practice has become so widespread in Zimbabwe that, as a Zimbabwean journalist informed me, state-run television has broadcast warnings against citizens setting brush fires.

Masxigora began hunting mice to support (and feed) his wife and three children soon after Mugabe began confiscating thousands of productive, white-owned farms in 2000, a policy that has since led to mass starvation. Not long ago, Zimbabwe, the "breadbasket of Africa," exported meat and produced what was widely considered to be Africa's finest livestock. Today, Masxigora tells me that each mouse nets $30 Zim dollars, about 12 cents, which makes him a wealthy man in Zimbabwe. "This is beef to us," he told me in August.

The conditions Mugabe rendered in Zimbabwe do not merely stem from idealistic economic and social policies gone awry. He has undertaken a campaign of violence and starvation against political opponents, the fallout of which is killing tens of thousands, if not more, every year. In 2005, there were roughly 4,000 more deaths each week than births, a rate that the famine has surely increased.

This is worse than brutality. The United Nations says that "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part" constitutes genocide, and that is exactly what Robert Mugabe has wrought.

The genocide in Zimbabwe is not as stark as others. There are no cattle cars and gas chambers. There are no machete-wielding gangs roaming the countryside. There are no helicopter gunships or Janjaweed. The killing in Zimbabwe is slow, oftentimes indirect, and not particularly bloody. But Mugabe's campaign of mass murder against those who oppose him has been no less deliberate than any of the other genocides in human history.

It all began with Mugabe's land seizures in 2000, in which he booted white farmers from the property they owned and replaced them with political hacks who have no interest in agriculture. The results were disastrous. Zimbabwe annually requires 1.8 million tonnes of maize. In 2006, it faced an 850,000 tonne deficit -- of which planned imports would cover just 60%.

The country also requires 400,000 tons of wheat annually, yet, last year, it produced only 218,000 tons by the government's count -- meaning the true total was likely far less.

As early as 2002, the BBC was reporting that people in Matabeleland, the southern region of the country where the minority Ndebele tribe lives, were starving. That same year, on the eve of a massive drought, the minister of Zimbabwean state security said, "We would be better off with only six million people-- with our own who support the liberation struggle. We don't want all these extra people." Today, according to the World Food Program, 38% of Zimbabweans are malnourished.

The fallout has rippled through society: Zimbabwe has the world's highest inflation rate (1,600% annually, expected to hit 4,000% by the end of the year) and an HIV prevalence of at least 18%, and probably higher. It also has the lowest life expectancy in the world: 34 for women and 37 for men (it was 62 in 1990). Last year, 42,000 women died from childbirth; less than a decade ago, this figure was under 1,000. The weekly death rate exceeds Darfur's.

Meanwhile, Mugabe's party, ZANU-PF, is wielding the food shortage as a weapon against the opposition. The government's Grain Marketing Board frequently denies food aid to people in districts that voted against Mugabe in recent elections; only those with ZANU-PF membership cards are able to get rations. Several people I spoke with in Harare's poor township of Hatcliffe told me that the army and the police regularly interfere with food distribution from USAID, UNICEF and other international aid groups. In 2002, USAID director Andrew Natsios publicly scolded Mugabe for manipulating American food aid, a practice that has continued unabated. And a 2004 Amnesty International report warned that "[T]he government has used the food shortages for political purposes and to punish political opponents."

As if starvation weren't bad enough, Mugabe unleashed more destruction in May 2005. Operation Murambatsvina (Shona for "Drive out Filth") aimed to "reruralize" some one million Zimbabweans -- mostly poor, urban shanty dwellers from areas that voted against Mugabe in parliamentary elections just weeks earlier. Mugabe's henchmen forcibly cleared the slums. A United Nations report filed by a special representative of the secretary-general found that the operation was "carried out in an indiscriminate and unjustified manner, with indifference to human suffering, and, in repeated cases, with disregard to several provisions of national and international legal frameworks." The Fourth Geneva Convention considers the "deportation or forcible transfer of population" to be a crime against humanity.

There is historic and legal precedent to warrant calling these policies genocide. In 1996, UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali declared that Rwandan Hutu refugees living in Zaire might be potential victims of "genocide by starvation." In December, 2006, the former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam (also known as the "African Pol Pot") was found guilty of genocide by a court in his own country after a 12-year trial. His government was convicted of having "conspired to destroy a political group and kill people with impunity" --not only through actual murder, but by creating and prolonging the 1984 Tigray famine, in which some 1.5 million people died. In 1991, Mariam escaped from Ethiopia, finding asylum in, of all places, Mugabe's Zimbabwe.

Incidentally, the starvation and transfer of Mugabe's opponents isn't the first time he has unleashed a genocidal campaign against his own people. Not long after taking power, in the mid-'80s, Mugabe's North Korean-trained ZANU-PF army killed an estimated 25,000 Ndebeles tribespeople in an operation known as the Gukurahundi (Shona for "the early rain which washes away the chaff "). The Matabeleland massacre ended, once and for all, any Ndebele challenge to Mugabe's power.

People are finally beginning to call it like they see it in Zimbabwe. R.W. Johnson, an Oxford-trained academic and for many years the London Sunday Times' southern

Africa correspondent, declared in a recent dispatch that, "A vast human cull is under way in Zimbabwe and the great majority of deaths are a direct result of deliberate government policies. Ignored by the United Nations, it is a genocide perhaps 10 times greater than Darfur's and more than twice as large as Rwanda's." (Johnson reported the widely published number of three million Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa and one million who have fled elsewhere, leaving a population of 14 million in Zimbabwe. But the government itself publishes an official figure of 12 million citizens, leaving two million people "missing.") And Arnold Tsunga, chairman of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (an NGO devoted to democracy and the rule of law in Zimbabwe), called Mugabe's policies "smart genocide," because they have taken place unnoticed by governments, aid organizations, and the international press.

Will anything come of it? This month, South Africa took over the rotating UN Security Council presidency. Although it's a perfect opportunity to publicize Mugabe's crimes, South Africa, the regional power, has emboldened Mugabe by endorsing every instance of his election-theft (flying in the face of international observer teams), supplying him with economic aid and strengthening the countries' military alliance. So it's likely nothing will happen.

Last month, Mugabe and 10,000 of his supporters gathered in a soccer stadium to celebrate his 83rd birthday -- gorging on giant cakes, tons of corn meal and 38 cattle slaughtered specifically for the event. "We are terribly disappointed," one man -- who brought his wife and children to the event but was not allowed in -- told the Guardian. "This was an opportunity for us to get a proper meal." So, while Mugabe feasts, men like Cleophus Masxigora continue to scour for mice.

- James Kirchick is assistant to the editor-in-chief of The New Republic.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Extended News; Government
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 03/13/2007 5:56:54 AM PDT by Clive
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To: blam; Cincinatus' Wife; sarcasm; happygrl; Byron_the_Aussie; robnoel; GeronL; ZOOKER; Bonaparte; ...

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2 posted on 03/13/2007 5:57:26 AM PDT by Clive
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To: Clive

See the future of America. when we transform from a Republic to a Liberalocracy. Is this what we want. Confiscation of wealth and property?


3 posted on 03/13/2007 6:04:39 AM PDT by nanook (Thomas Jefferson had it right.)
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To: Clive

thanks for posting it.

I have friends there...it is very sad.


4 posted on 03/13/2007 6:07:49 AM PDT by LadyDoc (liberals only love politically correct poor people)
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To: Clive

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Zimbabwe's most prominent opposition leader was seriously injured -- with deep gashes on his head and shoulders -- from beatings and torture by police who broke up a public meeting that had been declared illegal, colleagues said yesterday.

Morgan Tsvangirai, head of the Movement for Democratic Change, was in a suburban jail, said his wife, Susan, who was allowed to visit a day after he was detained at Sunday's meeting of the "Save Zimbabwe Campaign." She said some of her husband's wounds had been sutured and heavily bandaged, and one eye was badly swollen.

Lawyers said at least five other opposition, anti-government and civic leaders were among the scores of people arrested in the latest crackdown on dissent by President Robert Mugabe's security forces and political supporters.

The 83-year-old Mr. Mugabe has been blamed by opponents for repression, corruption, acute food shortages, deepening economic woes and inflation of about 1,600 percent -- the highest in the world.

Police said they fatally shot one demonstrator when they broke up Sunday's meeting in the western suburb of Highfield with tear gas, a water cannon and live ammunition.

Among the injured was opposition leader Lovemore Madhuku, who collapsed after being assaulted by police and was taken to the main hospital in Harare, where he was in serious condition, according to the Save Zimbabwe Campaign...............

http://www.washtimes.com/world/20070313-120845-9851r.htm


5 posted on 03/13/2007 6:18:44 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Clive

They got what they wanted - a country ethnically cleansed of all non blacks and run by a socialist - let them starve...


6 posted on 03/13/2007 6:20:08 AM PDT by 2banana (My common ground with terrorists - they want to die for islam and we want to kill them)
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To: Clive

They probably should have done in Zimbabwe what LBJ did in the USA with his Great Society. Tax the Be-Jesus out of the producing population to support the non-producing population.


7 posted on 03/13/2007 6:54:46 AM PDT by blam
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To: Clive

Poor liberals one of their dream boys goes bad and reality takes over. What suprises me is that there are "conservatives" who still look upon their leftist counterparts as slightly out of touch "idealists", and not the nihilistic monsters of the self-hatred seminar known as Liberalism. I for one would like to see George Will and Boy George sent to Zimbabwe where Boy George can apologize for his Comrade gone bad Mugabe while Mr. Will can be sent out to hunt mice.


8 posted on 03/13/2007 8:38:44 AM PDT by junta (It's Jihad stupid! It's the borders stupid! It's Political Correctness stupid!)
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To: Clive

Meanwhile, I wonder how things are in Rhodesia?


9 posted on 03/13/2007 9:10:58 AM PDT by Redleg Duke (Heaven is home...I am just TDY here!)
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To: Clive
Zimbabwe is and has been a particularly nasty study in social engineering after the old Stalin pattern. The sort of fellow who can come up with a slogan like "rain that washes away the chaff" for the murder of 25,000 people would have been right at home in the Ukraine in the late 1920's and the 30's. "The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic."

The problem is far more than one disgusting old man, it is the method that is the problem, the practice of a class-based ideology that is modern socialism, that enables a political party to affix itself to a society like a leech and suck it dry.

It is a political disaster of the first order that this became so fixed into the post-colonial movement within the European academy that the latter is now virtually indistinguishable from early-stage Marxism. But that is where the current generation of African leaders was nurtured and educated, and they were, once they returned to their native countries, an educated elite within relatively uneducated societies, which is Marx's dream come true. It is one of his base premises that the perquisite of power is plunder and that it has always been that way - if these new elites tended to act on that premise who could blame them?

But were that really the case the societies built around it would resemble their predecessors instead of becoming uniform economic basket cases. It is, in fact, a deeply flawed premise kept in place by two of the basest human emotions, envy and greed, papered over by a promise of a better world that never arrives.

And as the victim society's surplus diminishes so does the circle of its parasitical beneficiaries. The fellow convinced that Zimbabwe can support 6 million people has calculated it on the basis of the existing plunder to be had. He does not expect that to be six million subsistence farmers in a peaceful agrarian paradise. This paradise has limousines for the lucky and rifle butts for the rest. If the six million cannot be sustained by the surplus of others then it will become three million, then one, and then like all parasites the ruling class will drop off and look for another, richer host.

Do not look to the UN for help - it is peopled by precisely the sort of post-colonial educated elite that has attached itself to the groaning people of Africa. Failure is their norm and they hate the successful for their very existence even as they look to them as hosts.

10 posted on 03/13/2007 10:11:02 AM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: Clive

Another fine example why Marxists on ever continent should be smoked out and beaten to death like the vermin they are.


11 posted on 03/13/2007 10:13:35 AM PDT by TexasRepublic (Afghan protest - "Death to Dog Washers!")
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To: Clive
In 2005, there were roughly 4,000 more deaths each week than births, a rate that the famine has surely increased.

That's one Iraq quagmire every week. Where's the outrage?

12 posted on 03/13/2007 10:24:42 AM PDT by Moonman62 (The issue of whether cheap labor makes America great should have been settled by the Civil War.)
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To: 2banana
They got what they wanted - a country ethnically cleansed of all non blacks and run by a socialist - let them starve...

Better yet, the world's liberals should relocate there to starve with them.

13 posted on 03/13/2007 10:28:43 AM PDT by Moonman62 (The issue of whether cheap labor makes America great should have been settled by the Civil War.)
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To: Clive
If the UN were really concerned, Zimbabwe would be considered a prime candidate for being recolonized (OK, the weasel-words would be "placed under protectorate status.")

But the UN is not really concerned. Or maybe they are, in some factions -- but they're also utterly corrupt and weak.

14 posted on 03/13/2007 10:28:46 AM PDT by r9etb
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To: Clive
Ray Nagin, the chocolate mayor of the chocolate city - Robert Mugabe the chocolate president of a chocolate country.

The only difference is in carryng out the intent. Here Nagin has the federal government to rob the productive citizens to support his electorate of parasites. In Zimbabwe, the thieves have to steal directly. Here we have a second amendment that gives the citizens a chance to fight back (althogh nagin's jackbooted goons did go door to door violating citizens' right during the emergency - ever notice the police never have a problem in violating peoples' fundamental rights)

When liberals look at Zimbabwe they don't see a holocaust, they see their ideal state where government bureaucrats have everything and private citizens have nothing. Hillary's and Rudy's wet dream of America.

15 posted on 03/13/2007 10:41:02 AM PDT by from occupied ga (Your most dangerous enemy is your own government)
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To: Billthedrill
The leadership that survives are basically gangsters, because they understand that the game is really to take over however many suckers they can.

Karl Marx, the founder of communism, was a parasite, himself, living off his family and Engels while despising them all. Two of his daughters committed suicide and his family life is an object lesson to anyone that's interested in the founder of communism.

He never worked a day in his life, used 1820 documents in his "Das Kapital", which was published at least forty years after the abuses had been corrected by Parliament. He abused his own servants terribly. He was the deeply disturbed grandson of two distinguished rabbis, and a spoiled brat, to say the least. Che and Pol Pot come to mind, two other rich spoiled brats that decided to play god.

Okay, I'll calm down now and get off the soap box.)

16 posted on 03/13/2007 10:47:52 AM PDT by xJones
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To: Clive
This is one of the best article about Zimbabwe osted on FR.

Mugabe learned these tactics from North Korea: starve your own people.

He is up there with Amin in the worst that Africa has produced.

17 posted on 03/15/2007 3:59:27 PM PDT by happygrl
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To: LadyDoc
I have had friends there...it is very sad.

Most all are dead now, people in what is considered the "prime of life."

18 posted on 03/15/2007 4:05:10 PM PDT by happygrl
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