Posted on 07/02/2002 4:55:54 AM PDT by Clive
Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, plans to make service in his youth militia a prerequisite for high school graduates entering college or the job market, reports said today.
The youth militias, aligned with Mugabe's ruling party, were involved in brutal attacks on the opposition during presidential elections in March, human rights groups said.
The move is viewed by observers in Zimbabwe as part of Mugabe's efforts to encourage its minority white and Indian populations to leave the country. Mugabe's critics say he has been exacerbating racial tensions in the country in order to deflect attention from the nation's crumbling economy.
"It is envisaged that youths with the prerequisite qualifications will not be admitted into institutes of higher learning unless they undergo national service," Samuel Mumbengegwi, Higher Education Minister, told the state-run Herald newspaper.
Last week, teacher colleges, reported receiving directives to accept students who had been in the youth militia over students who had not served, even if those applicants were more qualified.
Mumbengegwi also said that those students who had recently completed degrees would need to show official certificates to prove they completed national service before being employed. "(The decision) was meant not only to instil a spirit of nationalism and national consciousness, but also (to) arrest the current brain drain," Mumbengegwi told the Herald,
"We cannot continue to be a training ground for people who are not committed to the development of the nation," he added.
With the economy on the brink of collapse and a food crisis looming, many Zimbabweans have left the country.
Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, has demanded the disbanding of the youth militia, now several thousand strong, as a condition for resumption of reconciliation talks with Mugabe's party.
Leonard Nkala, President of the Zimbabwe Teachers' Union, denounced the move and demanded clarification on how and to whom it would be applied. - Sapa-AP
Ethnic cleansing at it's finest. Is anything at all being done on behalf of these white and Indian refugees? Where are they going? What is the UN doing about this, anything? And why hasn't Bush (MY President) come out with some strong statements and action on this? Doesn't genocidal government behavior rate an official mention when the victims just happen to be white people?
It seems you have to read about this in the foriegn press to even know it's going on.
Africa is applying no sanctions.
This in spite of Africa's undertaking, central to the New Program for African Development, that Africa will police good governance in return for requested development aid from the donor countries in the amount of 62+ billion dollars per year.
A quote from the Declearation of independence of the Thirteen Colonies:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
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