Posted on 12/28/2002 5:29:31 AM PST by Clive
Dear Family and Friends,
Two days after the most frugal Christmas I can ever remember, I was taken out and treated to an early birthday lunch at a beautiful garden restaurant in my home town.
The gardens at this time of the year are superb, the lawns are thick, lush and impeccably trimmed. The numerous rose bushes are crowded with glorious colours and we sat under a majestic and towering paperbark acacia tree. The sky was endlessly blue and it was the most beautiful day and only the faint smell of smoke in the air hinted that perhaps everything was not quite as perfect and normal as it seemed.
We were served by an ever smiling and cheerful waiter who left us until we'd half finished our gins before he presented us with the menu. He waited politely as we mulled over the leather bound and gold edged menu which boasted three pages of mouth watering possibilities ranging from Inyanga trout and prawns to gammon or fillet steaks smothered in pepper, mushroom or garlic sauce.
It was time to order and although we couldn't afford anything exotic from the menu, we put forward our requests. Sadly the waiter just shook his head and said he was unable to supply any of the things we asked for. We thought again but even a chicken pie was not a possibility so we asked the waiter to tell us exactly which of the 50 odd possibilities on the menu, the kitchen could provide. He told us that there was no gas to run their stoves so we could only have what could be cooked on the open fire they had burning outside the kitchen door.
Another gin and a long wait for a smoky hamburger ended the perfect outing in which yet again I was reminded how everything about life in Zimbabwe has a veneer about it. On the surface everything looks so absolutely normal and yet in reality it is falling apart.
This veneer of normalcy is everywhere. A friend sat in a petrol queue on Christmas Eve and watched as a flashy green BMW, driven by a large, well dressed and over weight politician pulled up.
Not prepared to get in line like everyone else the green BMW waited for the right moment and then pushed in to the front of the queue. The petrol attendant was offered something and the green car was filled up before the hundreds of others who had been waiting for many hours.
The driver of the BMW got out and turned to the angry onlookers. He clenched his fist, raised his arm above his head and shouted: "Pamberi Zanu PF" (Forward with Zanu PF) No one said a word. The driver of the green car raised his arm again, "Pamberi Robert Mugabe" he bellowed - again no one said a word or made a move. The man got back into his newly filled car and drove away as if nothing had happened.
For now people are getting away with this disgusting stone age behaviour but under the surface of what appeared an apathetic crowd, there is a growing anger and resentment which most of us feel sure will come to some sort of an end in 2003. We hope and pray it does and that the New Year brings the changes that Zimbabwe so desperately needs if we are going to save the lives of more than half of our population now at real risk of starvation.
Until next week, with love, cathy
You are going to die unless you leave.
2003 is my bet, also. Things are just too unbalanced, the Zanu pigs are pushing the envelope way too far.
In 2000, when Mugabe started his so-called Third Chimurenga, there were 40,000 - 50,000 whites in Zimbabwe, depending on whose figures you accepted. The population of Zimbabwe was about 13 million, (possibly as high as 14 million depending angain on whose figures you accept).
There were 4,500 members of the Commercial Farmers' Union, of whom about 15% were black.
As of 6 months ago, the membership of the Commercial Farmers Union had dropped to 3,000 and the white population had dropped to about 30,000.
Most of the whites in Zim were elderly as the younger whites were seeking their fortunes in England and Australia and some in South Africa. More so today as younger whites have a better ability to leave.
I doubt that in terms of irregular military forces, there would have been as many as 20,000 effectives when the Third Chimurenga started.
Remember also, when it started most white farmers thought that the issues could be resolved by recourse to law.
Today, Mugabe has just brought back 15,000 troops from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has been an effective live exercise in counter-insurgency for his troops. He has promised those troops that there will be land for all of them.
A white insurgency in this land-locked southern African country would arouse the whole of southern Africa against it and it would have neither friends nor recourse to logistics.
If there were an insurgency, there would be legands about it that would last for generations, but the legends would be along the lines of The Alamo, Custer's Last Stand, Dieppe, Rourke's Drift, Gallipoli and Mesada.
True, the days of colonialism are gone, even though it did so much to improve African life styles. Now it's up to the native blacks to confront their dictators - and the West to keep shipping them relief food because of their own folly. For any Western nation to intervene would only be a rallying call for "colonialism returns". Tragic, and any white Zim in their right minds would have been gone long before now.
But so long as Mbeki and Obasanjo are not prepared to take effective action against Mugabe, the rest of Africa will do nothing.
I am afraid that a black insurgency will get no active sympathy from outside Zim and as it is landlocked it will get no logistics without such sympathy.
Brit, European or US military intervention will be treated by Africa as neo-colonialism and will arouse opposition and will cause those who might not like Mugabe today to become his enthusiastic supporters in opposition to any such action
Brit intervention worked well in Sierra Leone but the Brits were invited in and even then it had to be under the ostensible purpose of extracting Brit and Commonwealth nationals. Also, Sierra Leone has a coastline off which a Brit taskforce could be stationed from which a Royal Marine Commando could be lifted and a Para battalion could be supplied.
Similar considerations are at work today with the French in Cote d'Ivoire.
But no one in Africa is inviting Brit intervention in Zimbabwe and the nearest place that a Brit taskforce can take station is the Mozambique Channel which is 250 km from the east border of Zimbabwe across the sovereign nation of Mozambique.
It was this anger and resentment which led ZANU-PF to throw the elections.
I have heard on first account that the elite of the party did not expect to survive if MDC came to power.
I expect they had a better chance of retaining their heads prior to the subsequent destruction of the economy, but I won't make any predictions about the outcome any more.
Look what happened in Cambodia, yet Pol Pot and his minions were never brought to justice.
Once again (just as in Uganda) it took an outside force - the North Vietnamese - to push out Pol Pot.
But, in this case your comments are off base.
Zimbabwe is nominally Christian in faith, and highly Christian in terms of those who genuinely believe and practice.
Quite comparable to the U.S.
Every one should be given the passport of any country they wish, plus $100,000 to start life over in any civilized nation. That rules out Africa and the Islamic world, of course.
If only they had seen the writing on the wall back in 1965, it wouldn't have come to this...I agree they do have more guts than brains, they are like the people that go down into volcanic craters to find out where lava comes from!
Mugabe wasn't elected; the elections were stolen by him.
You will note that I compare Zimbabwe to the U.S. in terms of its practice of Christianity. How did we get Clinton, or abortion, or many of the evils in our society ?
There are many devoted Christians in that country whom I met when I lived there. There are in the opposition to Mugabe.
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