In a commentary at Babilown (Fr), Eloi Goutchili compares Robert Mugabe and Paul Biya, president of Cameroon for over 25 years, concluding that only real difference between them is the way they are treated in the Western press: “..the Western press, so harsh when it comes to a Mugabe and so concerned with democratic progress in Africa remains silent about the exploits of this hero of françafrique‘s [sham democracies, Biya]. For this self-righteous press, as for Whites, it's dictatorship only when their interests are endangered.”
Written byJennifer Brea
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I forget which leader they were talking about, but wasn’t there one US president who said:
“Yeah, he might be a bastard, but he’s our bastard!”
To assume anything but self-interest from a Western government involves ignoring centuries of history.
The “leader they were talking about” was Anastasio Somoza Garcia of Nicaragua, and the U.S. president who uttered the quote “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch!” was President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
To assume that governments from eastern or southern regions of the world would be vastly different than a “Western government” re: morals and self-interests would be truly naive and ignoring millennia of history. But that of course is not the point, is it?
@ BRE: I agree with you 100%, it’s a problem with the system, not the people or the races behind the system.
It’s refreshing to get such view. Mugabe has made several mistakes and that’s obvious, but he has waged a direct war on the bias and inconsistencies of the western world, which create the conducive environment for life presidents with their short sited foreign policies.
Sovereignty and self determination are important before Africa can make real progress on all fronts. Farm subsidies and politically inspired NGOs’ that tak sides are also not going to help. Civil society, the media and other important institutions need to be free, independent and run without interference from external forces and internal governments abusing power.