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mapoui
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30 Nov 2017 05:41 #355290
by mapoui
blackagendareport.com/clearing-smoke-and...rors-around-zimbabwe
Reasons for examining what is happening in Zimbabwe are many but few to none can be found in accounts by major news media or from liberal progressive pundits. Such accounts are busy reinforcing the over simplified and misinforming narrative that forcing out former 93 year-old president Robert Mugabe marks the end of 37 years of brutal dictatorship that has driven the country into economic disaster.
The over simplified version being fed to the general public is that everything kicked off after Mugabe fired a disagreeable vice-President. Zimbabwe is to be seen as just another African country with a long reigning dictator who presides over the repression and impoverishment of his own people who really are unable to govern themselves without the aid of the benevolent West.
Since the November 14th reports that Zimbabwean army tanks were seen heading towards the capital Harare in the middle of rising tensions between President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF and the military, led by one of Zimbabwe’s Vice-Presidents, Emmerson Mnangagwa, the ultimate political outcome is still unfolding. In short, the story has seen Mugabe first put under house arrest by the military, many of his high level supporters arrested, and eventually, after initially appearing to refuse, Mugabe was pressured into resigning to be replaced by Mnangagwa who was sworn into office last Friday.
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mapoui
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30 Nov 2017 05:48 #355291
by mapoui
blackagendareport.com/robert-mugabe-political-epitaph
ROBERT MUGABE: A POLITICAL EPITAPH
Two perspectives
There are those who might be tempted to drag Mugabe down to an ignominious end. And I must confess that if I were one of the millions who have suffered pangs of poverty, deprivation and neglect, I too might, perhaps, be tempted to take the same view. So I do not stand in judgment of people whose living life has been as if they were dead, as if their lives did not matter, people who danced in the streets of Zimbabwe at the end of this dictatorship.
My shared empathy with people who have suffered does not distract me from presenting another perspective. I remember Mugabe from the time he came to Dar es Salaam in mid-1970s. I had gone with the late Comrade Nathan Shamuyarira to meet him and other militants of ZANU. During those years, I had an opportunity also to meet with Comrade Joshua Nkomo, leader of ZAPU, another revolutionary leader. I will not go into the feud between ZANU and ZAPU, which later reconciled and joined forces. Zimbabwe was our second home where my wife and I stayed longest (for 23 years) after being exiled from my home, Uganda. I did not take up Zimbabwean nationality, but I am a Zimbabwean. So I am qualified to say that in my eyes, both Nkomo and Mugabe qualify as the “fathers of the nation”.
Mugabe will be remembered for the good he did for the nation. He refused to compromise with imperialism; at independence, he was generous enough to open his arms even to those with whom he had been fighting in the bush for twenty years. Along with his party, he transformed the lives of the ordinary people by bringing education, health, water, sanitation and housing to millions of rural people. I was witness to all this. Instead of joining the University of Zimbabwe (which is what Shamuyarira expected, I (with my wife, Mary, and the late Ludwig Chizarura) worked with communities in the rural areas for over two decades.
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Clearing the Smoke and Mirrors Around Zimbabwe
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