As if all the troubles bedeviling Zimbabweans were not enough, Zimbabweans were aghast last week as it emerged their beleaguered nation is going to lead the UN Commission on Sustainable Development [1] in yet another cruel twist in the nightmare that is Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe's ascendancy occurred in spite of the fact that it is the nation with both the fastest shrinking economy and one of the highest inflation rates in the world.
Enraged Sokwanele offers this observation:
One of the practical considerations will be how will Zimbabwe manage to attend meetings in the EU given the number of travel restrictions against Mugabe’s government because of his government’s disregard for human rights. And how did Zimbabwe’s UN ambassador Boniface Chidyausiku respond to this problem? Like this: “What has sustainable development to do with human rights?”
Frustrated that the Australian cricket team has succumbed to political pressure [2] and cancelled their September trip to Zimbabwe Bev at Kubatana contemplates the good that could have come out of the tour [3]:
Australians might not care about this, but it’s important to review what is the best overall strategy rather than fall back on the knee-jerk call for a boycott.
So then, what to do?
If the Australian cricket team is considering a boycott, then they have agreed that politics and sport can and do mix. So perhaps it would be more worthwhile for the Australian cricket team to tour Zimbabwe: and Do Good whilst they are here rather than their usual cricket, huntin’ and fishin’ fun.
Maybe individual players can meet with activists who have been abused as a show of support and respect? Or they can visit Harare’s government hospitals and check out the conditions that Zimbabweans seeking medical treatment have to experience. Or they can deliver a petition to the Minister of Sport & Culture asking for the rights of Zimbabweans to be respected.
Meanwhile The Bearded Man [4] is furious about the hardly surprising reality that while the rest of the country goes with out electricity due to recently introduced loadshedding, the president and other high ranking officials in government never have to go without electricity.
The sooner that politicians realise that they were selected by the voting public and therefore are servants of the people, and not the other way around – the better.
Why should Mugabe live in a false environment? Why not endure the daily problems that the normal people of Zimbabwe have to face? Why be given the special treatment?
If he doesn't have to go through the same experiences, how can he relate to his people?
Oh. Sorry. That's right – he cares not one iota for his people, preferring to live in luxury and have people falling over themselves to sate him. He is a self-obsessed, egoist with some serious paranoia coupled together with a self-importance that is absurd in its manifestation.
Finally, Zimbabwe: Outpost of Tyranny [5] in a post titled “Western Journalists, Whether Traveling Undercover, or Observing from their Johannesburg Perches, Are Missing the Story in Zimbabwe, as they Perpetuate Myths, and Carry Water for Mugabe. (Sub-title: ‘Majoring on the Minors and Minoring on the Majors.’)” offers this sharp critique of Western journalist's pseudo reporting on Zimbabwe from the comfort of South Africa:
these reporters are missing the big story, that of the Mugabe regime's meticulously calculated and brutally (and sadistically) executed campaign, underway since March 11th, to wipe out the pro-democracy civil society and political movement, they are also contributing to perpetuating the myth–a myth promulgated by Mugabe and the ZANU-PF thugs themselves–that the “real story” is the supposed disunion within the opposition MDC, and their supposed propensity for violence.
In his last missive from Zimbabwe, on which we did not blog last week, the illicit reporter from the Economist carries Mugabe's water for him when he subtitles his series “our online reporter finds the opposition in disarray,” without pointing out that that opposition has been the object since March 11th of a savage Mugabe-orchestrated reign of terror that has resulted in thousands of persons being beaten, hundreds being arrested and hospitalized following torture, and at least 2 being killed.