Mick Hume: lazy and cliched analysis of Zimbabwe

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/mick_hume/article3835288.ece

'I don't support Robert Mugabe, you don't support Mugabe, nobody in the West supports Mugabe. But before slapping one another's backs, we need to consider some uncomfortable questions.'

I wasn't engaging in any backslapping...

Why did millions of Zimbabweans vote for Mugabe? Yes, he is a tyrant and a vote stealer. Yet even independent observers concede that he still must have won more than 40 per cent in the presidential poll. Amid 80 per cent unemployment and hyperinflation, that seems so incredible that we have ignored it.

Its is absolutely not incredible. Mugabe is a Shona. More than three quarters of the population are Shona. Shona get all the good govmt jobs. Shona get all the goodies like stolen commercial farms. Some people in Zimbabwe have done very well under Mugabe. You do the math.

Some might just put it down to tribal loyalties, or claim those Zimbabweans are simply too cowed or ignorant to know what's good for them. Alternatively, we could ask whether repeated interference by Britain and the international community has helped to consolidate Mugabe's remaining support in Zimbabwe and Africa. First off, Africans in general don't get to vote in Zimbabwean elections, so why discuss them at all in this context? Secondly, the cart and the horse are firmly transposed in this peurile argument. Up until 1998/1999 there was NO criticism of Mugabe outside of Zimbabwe AT ALL. Check if you don't believe me. Margaret Beckett, then UK Foreign Secretary, even admitted last year that “if it comes to a choice between the hero of the revolution and the colonial oppressor, they know whose side to be on.” Who are 'they'? All Africans? Again, they don't come into this argument AT ALL. The title of this piece is 'Zimbabwe: keep your nose out', not 'Africa: keep your nose out.' Why are you and Margaret Beckett invoking a Colonial Oppressor who doesn't exist? Not only did Britain ensure that Mugabes rigged and dodgy election in 1980 stuck, it made no protest whatsoever when a year later he murdered 20,000 Ndabele just to make sure they knew who was in charge. Thats the absolute opposite of a colonial oppressor- thats someone who connives in the disgusting, murderous tyranny of a local despot.

And “they” need not look back as far as the era of colonialism or white rule. The sanctions imposed by Western institutions over the past decade have, says one author, “made it nearly impossible for Zimbabwe to engage in normal international trade” and helped to make it the only African nation with a negative growth rate. Could it be that some ungrateful Zimbabweans took exception to such outside aid? How to be wrong about everything in one short paragraph... There are no trade sanctions against Zimbabwe- at all. There are targetted sanctions against individual Zanu PF officials resticting their use of the international banking system and entry into Europe/Britain/US; a fact which ANY RESEARCH AT ALL would have revealed to even a half-way diligent journo. If there are no sanctions, they can't have been why the Zimbawean economy has negative growth rates. The real reason for those negative growth rates our crap author scrupulously doesn't mention. And presumably, if the non-existent sanctions didn't harm the Zimbabwean economy, Zimbaweans don't sit around bitching about them...

Other unasked questions include: what makes Mugabe's authoritarianism and militarism more objectionable than that of Western allies on the continent such as Uganda or Rwanda? Might a troubled British Government have its own reasons for leading a global moral crusade to counter Mugabe's impertinent description of Mr Brown as “a tiny dot in this world”? Answer to the first question? Nothing. But this straw man argument is hardly worth disputing. OF COURSE evil activities in one country are not more or less evil than evil actions in another country. But I have never heard anybody suggest it. Uganda is an ally of Britain? Since when? And all the atrocities in Uganda are the work of the Lords Resistance Army nutjobs, not the Ugandan govmt. So where's the parallel? Rwanda was never even part of the British empire, and its present govmt is the one which swept the Hutu murderers from the country and brought a semblance of peace and justice to the place. Is Mick Spume equating Mugabes regime with Kagame? Both igorant and disgusting.
The last insinuation, that Britains policy six years ago might be a consequence of a comment Mr Mugabe made about a week ago is so stupid it makes me laugh out loud.

And perhaps most importantly: shouldn't we learn our lesson about the perils of intervention - whether economic, political and military? Some feel Britain's guilty colonial past gives us a special responsibility to intervene now. But it is possible to conclude the opposite: that history shows that interfering in other people's crises does not work and will make matters worse. Iraq surely ought to serve as a warning against trying to liberate people “on their behalf”. Or are we too blinded by self-righteousness to see that less might be more?
Errr... was the author half-asleep when he wrote this? Even for him this stuff is lazy and nonsensical. The perils of intervention are indeterminable in advance, as are the benefits. Intervention of British troops stopped the Sierra Leone civil war in its tracks. A year or two later, the US did the same thing in Liberia. Britain and the US went into Iraq and that didn't work out so well. Please show me a quote from ANYWHERE or ANYBODY arguing 'our guilty colonial past gives us a special responsibility to intervene now'. I have never heard anybody use that argument ever. Sometimes intevening in other peoples crises works, and sometimes it doesn't. No one can say in advance. I just knew he was going to bring up Iraq. Strangely, he didn't bring up Rwanda in THIS context; in 1994 most lefties like Hume screeched that something ought to be done by the ex-colonial powers. To be blinded by self-righteousness, one must be self-righteous. Present evidence of that before basing arguments on it.

We have come a long way since Cecil Rhodes, founder of the colony that is now Zimbabwe, announced in 1887 that “the native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise”. Yet many still seem to find it hard to accept that Africans can and must sort out their own problems. I may be wrong, but didn't Zimbabweans settle scores with an autocratic regime before? You are indeed wrong, about pretty much everything. Quoting Cecil J Rhodes doesn't persuade me you have read up on Zimbabwe. Indeed all the other stupid assertions about Zimbabwes last ten years indicate you don't know the first thing. Saying 'Africans can and must sort out their own problems' is just verbal filler- devoid of any moral or practical information. As policy, its less than nothing. Humes last point shows how little understanding he has- has he heard of the Lancaster House agreement? Does he know how Rhodesia ended? Does he understand the brokering role Britain played at that time? No. He knows nothing of them, but he pronounces anyway.