Zimbabwe in ashes

Over the past few years I have been reading, with keen interest, the continuing stories of Zimbabwe's internal collapse. It is a grim fascination I have with watching a culture crumble. 80% unemployment. 50-55% AIDS infected. 1,000,000% inflation (which is the worst case scenario; 5,000% the best) which forced the government to print the highest denomination in history: 200,000. They lack hard currency due to the collapse of their business sector, the flight of the middle and upper class, and government policies/corruption which has undermined the entire economic infrastructure of the nation. They're unable to pay for imports (even reaching the point of missing payments on shipments) and export nothing due to businesses either closing, factories shutting down, or a basic lack of raw materials. Their schools have all closed. And worst of all, Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of Africa, now isn't even capable of growing enough food to feed itself when but a decade ago they were exporting food to neighboring countries. This has led to a third of the remaining population facing death by starvation. Another third of the population has fled to other countries, many willing to cross gator infested waters in order to sneak into South Africa. The nation is literally on the verge of evaporation.

My initial interest was drawn when I visited South Africa for the first time back in June 2000. I read an article on Mugabe's land redistribution plan which legitimized the stealing of farms from white farmers in order to give them to blacks, largely soldiers who had fought for Mugabe and independence from the prior white regime of Rhodesia, to further the "revolution". There was a bit of dark comedy involved as some of the "soldiers" claiming land had not been born until years after Mugabe had become leader of Zimbabwe. There also must have been some misunderstanding as these "soldiers" thought they had rights to many of the farmers' daughters too as they raped viciously during their expropriations.

From the get-go it was obvious there was no forward thinking involved in Mugabe's redistribution scheme. First, the process was not properly planned and allocated which led to chaos as multiple groups have laid claims to the same lands. In fact, many farms were seized before official orders were even established for their expropriation leading to Mugabe and his government cohorts to rush to keep up in printing legal decrees for seizures of property. Second, there was no training of these future black landowners in modern farming methods nor a gradual transfer from whites to blacks making it impossible to keep crop yields at then current levels (meaning pre-2000) as blacks proved ignorant of how to tend the land. Third, in disenfranchising the white groups of their land and thus causing a great fear that their savings would be next, Mugabe was rudely surprised by their withdrawal of much of their capital from Zimbabwe's banks as they fled to more hospitable, and law enforcing, lands. If one is to commit to a policy, one must go all the way. Mugabe must be kicking himself now for letting so much money slip through his fingers. He did eventually stop the flow of cash out of Zimbabwe but by then it had become a trickle as the majority of it was long gone.

The minute I read about what was happening I had flashbacks to Idi Amin and his stripping all non-blacks of property and wealth in order to purchase the support of Uganda's black citizens and buy legitimacy after his coup so that he could tighten his somewhat tenuous grip on power.

Amin had come to power via a coup not long after the United Kingdom had granted independence to his nation of Uganda. Despite freedom from colonial rule, many blacks still harbored animosity against their former white rulers, especially since following independence whites and Asians still controlled the majority of businesses, farms, and financial capital. Many blacks had come to think that changes would occur rapidly following indpendence with blacks realizing the prosperity they believed whites had held from them while in power. But political power did not equal economic change and the blacks became impatient and agitated. What many blacks saw was continued dominance by whites and other non-Africans leading to a subconscious belief that nothing had changed (save now there was a black puppet leader whose economic strings were pulled by Britain). What good was power without money? They still lived in slums. They still struggled in poverty. Nothing had really changed.

Amin, once in power, preyed on this belief by gradually clothing all non-blacks in every wrong imaginable for the nation of Uganda much in the same way Hitler and the Nazis had villified the Jews. Thus he began to expand his powerbase and draw support from the black population by turning them on white and Asian citizens, buying the blacks off in effect by giving them permission to seize the property of non-blacks for themselves. Finally power could be used to give the blacks what they wanted.

The only problem with this scenario of expropriation was it destroyed Uganda's infrastructure as thriving businesses were taken over by individuals who couldn't grasp simple mathematics let alone how to run a store. One funny incident had various natives, after taking over Asian and white owned clothing stores, selling pants based on their waist sizes believing that the numbers were the prices. So a 30" waist went for 30 Ugandan bucks.

Without individuals trained in management, technical aspects, electronics, etc., businesses rapidly closed down. No one knew how to formulate a plan, restock inventory, upkeep equipment, etc. Thus business, a necessary component for a middle class and a flourishing economy, vanished as no one from outside the country would dare invest in such an unstable climate and no one inside was capable of keeping it alive.

What Amin did, and what I foresaw happening to Zimbabwe under Mugabe, was create a culture of decline and violence, fashioning a climate of destruction rather than invention as he gave permission to the blacks of Uganda to finally release their repressed anger at decades of white rule. White dominance, as well as the rule of law they created, eroded. Safety came to rely not on government but power. Armed groups decided what would and would not happen. They stripped all non-blacks of everything they could get their hands on, businesses, belongings, and savings which took decades to build, and frittered it all away in a few years of wild pillaging. No one stopped to wonder what would happen when they ran out of victims.

The competent and critical elements of society were driven out as supporters were paid off. These supporters, soldiers and the mob, were really nothing more than muscle. They had no experience beyond beating the opposition down. And now they were in charge, a hungering mass that wanted to devour and was incapable of anything sustainable. But that was never their job, to create. They were around to enforce Amin's will. This was the overarching problem.

The loyalty of Amin's core supporters, his hatchet men, was based on what the leader could give them. Amin came to rely on them more and more as he ran out of ways to keep the trust of the majority of Uganda's citizens. Without foreigners and whites to blame, the economy wrecked, and no solution in sight, Amin used the only tool he had in his arsenal: brutal violence.

Thus the cycle continued to play out of divide and conquer. It had seen blacks versus whites/Asians. Once the whites/Asian were gone, Amin split the population between his security forces and the rest of Uganda. The only problem was he was running out of ways to keep the loyalty of his security forces.

As Uganda became more unstable, atrophying and rotting, and Amin continued to snatch whatever he could, he began to discover that after a while there wasn't anything left to grab. His security forces began to grumble because their pay dwindled and the remaining populace began to voice their dissent because of the fact that things were worse rather than better despite all non-blacks being driven from the nation, finally realizing they had been manipulated. The two forces were close to unifying against Amin because neither the security forces nor the citizens of Uganda were doing better than the other. Both were losing under him so why not remove him?

Amin did the only thing he could: he gave free reign to his security forces to murder, rob, and rape as they pleased. He openly sacrificed his own population, following that downward spiral further into the darkness, in order to pay off his supporters with blood when there was nothing left to give them. Thus he removed any chance of his security forces embracing the dissenting citizenry of Uganda.

I knew Mugabe was going to follow the same path. He had secured power from a nation long dominated by whites. There was a simmering anger held by the blacks over the repressive regime they had toppled. It was inevitable, Rhodesia's style of governance being heavily racist and oppressive of blacks.

At first Mugabe took the more enlightened path and followed a farsighted plan utilizing the white population's expertise in education, business, and farming. He had to. Problems with various separatist movements, as well as a war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, gave him viable excuses for why change was taking so long and why he could ill afford any radical economic changes in Zimbabwe. The separatist Ndebele nation allowed Mugabe to galvanize his people behind him against a force he could claim threatened the very independence they had finally won from white rule. Once the Ndebele were crushed, Mugabe embarked on a war in the DRC as a means to acquire economic gains (for natural resources such as diamonds, precious metals, etc.) to fund programs and foster much needed economic gains in Zimbabwe. When the war in the DRC proved too costly, in both men and materiel, and many of his supporters began to call for him to step down because of the effects it had on Zimbabwe, Mugabe decided it was time to divide and conquer.

Mugabe started by claiming in 2000 that whites made up only 1% of the population but held 70% of all arable land. Mugabe charged that whites held improportionate control of the economy and decided it was time to rectify that problem. He seized on the underlying hatred the blacks had for white transgressions from two decades previous as well as frustration at continued white propserity as blacks remained in large part among the lower classes.

So Mugabe used the same excuses Amin did; foreigners and non-natives (non-blacks) were blamed for the nation's faults in order to divide his critics and turn them upon one another. His supporters, former members of his militias, government troops, and government officials, were all granted the right to steal farms, businesses, and more from non-blacks under the veil of "returning what was rightfully due to native Zimbabweans". Since Mugabe could not earn their support, he bought it.

The sad part of this entire affair is the ignorance of the native population. In 2005, after years of struggling to make some sort of change in the increasingly dire situation, the international community was able to force Mugabe to hold elections. Once more Mugabe warned the blacks of Zimbabwe that if they did not vote to retain him in office then the West would turn them into a puppet state, returning Zimbabwe to colonial status. This in itself was a joke as Zimbabwe, when it was Rhodesia, was not only better governed but in far better shape when it was a British colony. As was to be expected due to Zimbabwean xenophobia, the majority voted Mugabe back into office.

Do I feel a twinge of guilt at the glee I have at watching Zimbabwe burn? No. Two years ago these people were given a chance to avoid the slow genocide of their lands. Instead they knowingly approved of and continued to follow Mugabe down that broad path towards the cliff.

The people of Zimbabwe are a racist group who use past transgressions, some largely fabricated, to attack, rape, and murder whites in their country in order to satisfy their base desires. Pathetic in their lusts, shortsighted in their goals, and destined to turn on one another when there is no one else left to kill, Zimbabwe will not know peace until there is nothing left to destroy.

This devolving of a nation, the horrific atrocities as Zimbabwe tears itself apart is hypnotizing. Watching civilization crack and splinter, seeing the release of the demons inside these people: it is fascinating.

The only question I have for myself is why do I enjoy seeing this nation dissolve? Perhaps I have no heart; only a pit of darkness where life should beat.