Mugabe Condemned By His Own

London Telegraph (UK) | 07/09/02 | Tim Butcher and Peta Thornycroft

[Spacetrucker]

South African business leaders denounce Mugabe By Tim Butcher in Johannesburg and Peta Thornycroft in Harare (Filed: 07/09/2002)

South Africa's business community yesterday broke its silence on Zimbabwe, denouncing Robert Mugabe's economic mismanagement and warning it could spell disaster for the region.

South Africa's top commercial managers, who influence the thinking of President Thabo Mbeki through a variety of presidential advisory committees, had previously been conspicuously mute on the subject of Zimbabwe.

Unwilling to criticise Mr Mbeki's policy of "quiet diplomacy", the mainly white businessmen shirked the debate on Zimbabwe even when it damaged investor confidence in South Africa and caused a run on the rand last year.

But their patience appears to have run out with the publication of two statements in less than a week that suggest a hardening of their position.

"We believe that the African Union, in conjunction with the Southern African Development Community, should urgently assess the Zimbabwean situation and come up with a pragmatic and sustainable plan to deal with the situation there," Kevin Wakeford, chief executive officer of the South African Chamber of Business, said.

"Added to the human rights violations is the worsening food crisis in the region with millions facing imminent starvation. We believe that the international community should urgently formulate a strategy to address this situation before it becomes a humanitarian catastrophe."

In Zimbabwe a new purge of white farmers has begun, with police ordering hundreds to abandon their homes by 2pm tomorrow.

The Commercial Farmers' Union said police had ordered farmers in the prime grain producing areas around the town of Chinhoyi, 60 miles north of Harare, to leave.

Zimbabwe's information ministry has refused to renew the work permit for Griffin Shea, 27, an American journalist working for Agence France Presse.

[B4Ranch]

It sure took them long enough to get off their butt and see the fire!

[Spacetrucker]

They couldn't see the forest for the trees.... umm.., err..something like that. True socialism requires that they are completely blind to their fellows' failings, and when confronted with such,...DENY, DENY, DENY! Fortunately, some voices of reason broke through the cacophony of idiotism proudly displayed there. I would be willing to bet that this will be our 'next' Somalia, sans the traitorous NON-CIC that wouldn't provide the troops with adequate equipment.

[Cicero]

It's not complacency or politics, it's pure fear. The businessmen in South Africa must know deep down that they are sitting on a volcano, and that what is happening in Zimbabwe today may happen in South Africa tomorrow. It would be enormously self-destructive for the blacks in South Africa to drive out the white businessmen, but that hasn't stopped blacks in numerous other postcolonial countries from doing the same thing. Ironically, I think it's only the continued presence and enormous authority of Nelson Mandela that has kept these resentments from exploding. After he dies, things may well spiral out of control.

None of these businessmen wants to get out on a limb and call attention to himself as a future target of racial resentment.

[thucydides]

These countries, which formerly enjoyed some modicum of civilized life under colonial rule, are rapidly slipping back into the conditions of utter savagery that always prevailed before. Cannibalism, genocide, slavery, and all the evils of savage society are returning.