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Mugabe's worst crime
by Thanos Kalamidas
2013-07-26 11:04:57
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A few days ago I wrote an article about Trayvon Martin and racial profiling. What I tried to say is that racial and ethnic profiling, even looks profiling has gone beyond the few racists and xenophobes and has reached states, governments and institution. I also pointed out how things have turned the last decade in Europe where to be an Arab or following a certain code – including Trayvon Martin’s hood – could be dangerous.

But what happens when one leader trains a nation to be racists and xenophobes for more than thirty years. That means that there are two generations in that country that has been so much brainwashed so the damage is beyond repair. That the same man is responsible for thousands of murders, tortured, raped; for the economic distraction of the country and the reasoning for a local uneasiness are all unforgivable and when the time comes he will pay. But what he has done to the brains and the hearts of this people is something beyond punishment.

A couple of years ago joining a project it happened to work with a man from Zimbabwe. The man had escaped the Zimbabwean poverty looking for his dream that he would never be able to fulfil in a country where artistic quests is something impossible. In Zimbabwe everything for thirty years now serves Robert Mugabe. The painters paint for Robert Mugabe, the sculptors sculpture for Robert Mugabe, the writers write only about Robert Mugabe and the directors make films and documentaries for the glory of Robert Mugabe.

So the man in his quest for a different artistic expression, trying to find the Fellini and the Bergman inside him left Zimbabwe and moved to the west. Despite the fact that the man had graduated from the University of Zimbabwe he had never heard of Fellini or Bergman. Here I must note that the adult literacy rate in Zimbabwe for the year 2011 was 83.6%. But education was not my point, at least not here; the point here is that this man didn’t come to Europe to escape from Mugabe or that he was a member of the opposition. Actually the man was one of the less interested in politics I ever met.

For a couple of weeks our projects didn’t meet so my only socializing with him was limited to a good morning until one day we found ourselves in that point where our projects met and we had to spent a few days working together. From the very beginning I felt a hostile attitude which I could not explain plus after my pass form South Africa and Botswana South Africa had grown strongly inside me not to say that I have fallen in love with both these two countries. So I was very positive to him and I tried form the very beginning to find a communication way based on my even small knowledge of that area of the planet. In vein. His hostile attitude gradually grew to that point that we couldn’t work together. So in the end I was forced to talk with him and ask for some answers.

Having spent a lot of years in Britain, having studies in a British University and mainly having grown in Britain even though didn’t make me an anglophile has definitely left a lot of things in me and my studies had been often mentioned in the group. So suddenly I found out that I was responsible of the colonization and by definition a criminal since I was white. Things got worst because a few days before in a conversation while the group had lunch, I expressed my support to gay marriage and to make it worst – as it was coming out of the conversation – I mentioned that one of the proudest moments of my life was when I shook hands with Nelson Mandela.

The man was uncontrollable, shouting to me that homosexuals should be shot because they are a disease, that Nelson Mandela was a traitor because he alienated with the whites in South Africa and I should be in prison because I have studied and lived in UK. I didn’t say anything. I just let him continue for more than half an hour and I have to admit that in one point I got a bit worry that he might turn violent. Thankfully he had the decency not to. Gradually his anger included some Middle East and Arab colleagues to expand to an Indian one and start with the Asians. This lasted for another half an hour but later he resigned the project screaming that this was an all white racist gathering. Odd because out of the fifteen people participating there were only two white people including me.

Two years after, I still wandering what this man is doing and how he handles his life in Europe and the truth is that I feel so sorry for him. And sadly despite all his anger and unfair attacks he was the victim of Mugabe. He was Mugabe’s major crime that I don’t know how it will ever be repaired.

Robert Mugabe was supposed to be one of the leaders in the uprising against the white minority that ruled Zimbabwe with Ian Smith. Apartheid, discrimination, racism were the reality of the Smith regime and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) was the opposition, the defender of the black population and the only hope for liberation. Robert Mugabe was one of the leaders and gradually the leader of the ZANU. He was prosecuted form the regime and actually spent ten years in a Rhodesian prison. Zimbabwe achieved de jure sovereignty from the United Kingdom in April 1980 and Robert Mugabe enjoyed reorganization by winning the first free elections in the independent country and becoming the first Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.

Thirty years after in the beginning of the 21st century with Mugabe’s regime having replaced Ian Smith’s regime even to the discrimination and using methods that would make Ian Smith jealous, we all know now that Robert Mugabe didn’t really want to liberate Zimbabwe but to enslave the Zimbabweans under his rule.

During his ruling inflation reached the vertiginous 11,200,000%, unemployment with 2012 rates is 95%. In 2010, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) found that Zimbabwe's literacy rate had climbed to a high of 92% and the health system has more or less collapsed.

That while Mugabe lives in palaces with bank accounts all around the world. While the Zimbabweans are literally starving Mugabe organized a birthday party for himself that could feed the whole nation for days. A country with one of the world's largest platinum reserves, the Marange diamond fields, discovered in 2006, are considered the biggest diamond find in over a century but all revenues from the field have disappeared into the pockets of Mugabe, army officers and ZANU-PF politicians.

There is no freedom of speech in Zimbabwe with the remaining media totally controlled by the police and the secret service, both controlled by Mugabe’s cronies and respect to human rights is world unknown in Zimbabwe. Kidnaps of opposition members, imprisoning without warnings, torture, rape and finally murder are the usual practices of the regime and a daily reality in Zimbabwe. Everybody loves Mugabe in Zimbabwe because the other choice is death.

Robert Mugabe, the caricature Hitler of Africa, will find his punishment dead or alive, his crones and the gang of the murderers who surround him and keep him in power will get their share but what will happen to all these people who are coming out of this regime brainwashed and destroyed. How this is going to be fixed?

In the next few days Zimbabwe is going for presidential elections. Of course Mugabe is candidate, again. With opposition dead his chances are not small but what about the Zimbabweans and their kids. What about the future of a brainwashed nation. I’m afraid if nothing happens soon their chances are very few!

*********************************************************

Some of the things Mugabe has said lately during his presidential campaign

Britain is "very cold, uninhabitable country with small houses"

The only white man you can trust is a dead white man.

It may be necessary to use methods other than constitutional ones.

"Then we have this American president, Obama, born of an African father, who is saying we will not give you aid if you don't embrace homosexuality. We ask, was he born out of homosexuality? We need continuity in our race, and that comes from the woman, and no to homosexuality. John and John, no; Maria and Maria, no. They are worse than dogs and pigs. I keep pigs and the male pig knows the female one."

"We feel ashamed of the influx of Zimbabweans in South Africa. If you go to their hotels, there are Zimbabweans all over. The same applies to other businesses. Zimbabweans are literally running the South African economy. South Africans end up attacking Zimbabweans because there are just too many in that country."

 


       
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