Categories: uncategorized
Date: 24 June 2008 13:05:06
With the terrible events being played out in Zimbabwe, today's newspaper headlines are clammering for a military intervention. This shows how desparate we are to find a solution.
Love him or hate him, Mugabe has managed to negate the opposition in Zimbabwe. Since he lost the last election, and forced a fake run off, he has managed to tighten hold on power. This has been with the help of his military commanders who fear for their future in a Mugabeless Zimbabwe.
The oppostion has been brutally suppressed and out manouvered at every turn. The decision by Morgan Tsvangirai to seek refuge in the Dutch embassy has only given more ammunition to Mugabe's propaganda machine. "Why did he choose the Dutch and not an African embassy? Because he is in the pay of the white colonialist powers." is what is being said.
So who would supply the troops for a military effort to depose him? His African neighbours? The UN? THe Brits or US?
The answer is none of them.
The UN are powerless because the Chinese, and probably the Russians, will veto any such move in the Security Council. South Africa, it's biggest and most powerful neighbour, has too many internal difficulties of its own. IN addition the ANC is divided over their response. President Mbeki has done, and saidm, nothing. Zuma. the ANC leader, is saying that Zimbabwe should be pressured into changing but he has no real power, as yet.
The US and UK are incapable of mounting such action as they are over committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The French and other European nations are not interested.
At the end of the day Zimbabwe has nothing. Mugabe and his cohorts have bled the country dry. The infrastructure. once the envy of Africa, is in ruins; agriculture has been destroyed by droughts but more importantly by the action of Zanu PF's "War Veterans" in siezing white farms; the minerals that they have are being left unmined because they can't sell them and the equipment for extraction is in need of essential repair.
Zimbabwe was once the "bread basket" of Southern Africa. Now it will be years before it can get back to that level of production. It's not the soil that's the problem - that's still very fertile - it's the fact that there are few people left with the skills, or equipment, to use it properly.
A Zimbabwean man and woman were on Five Live yesterday, speaking from Bulawayo and Harare respectively. They said that they'd welcome any military intervention if it guaranteed to make things better. That is how desparate things are there. They don't want further sanctions, or the power to be cut off, they want their neighbours to help free them of this tyranny.
The problem is that Mugabe knows that no one will.
History Today :
1314 : Robert The Bruce leads a Scottish army in victory over the English at Bannockburn. "and sent them homeward to think again".
1717 : The Grand Lodge of English Freemasons was formed. Nudge, nudge, secret handshake....
1812 : Napoleon begins his invasion of Russia with 614,000 men. Thankfully they were defeated by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra playing the 1812 Overture at Borodin a few months later.
1850 : Horatio Kitchener is born - Your Country Needs YOOOOOOOUUUUUU!!!!
1948 : Soviet forces begin the land blockade of West Berlin to drive the Western powers out. They hadn't reckoned with our enginuity in airlifting West Berlin away from trouble.