Mugabe has launched his re-election campaign. I admit, I’m surprised there will even be an election, I suppose I should credit to MDC for that. The stiff stench of corruption is already in the air with Major-General Paradzayi Zimondi, head of Zimbabwe’s prisons ordering his staff to vote for Mugabe. Mugabe took the opportunity to continues to blame all the country’s problems on the White oppressors this time saying Black Zimbabweans were being cheated out of their share of the mining business and that once he corrected this prosperity would return to the people.
In a brief over-view of Mugabe’s rule of the Zimbabwe UNICEF announced the number of reported cases of children being raped in Zimbabwe has jumped more than 40% in the last 3 years. Thousands of White farmers (the backbone of the Zimbabwean economy) have been forcibly deported or murdered. Around 3 million starving Zimbabweans have fled to South Africa (that’s right, these people have fled into the “rape capital of the world”). What was once the largest grain exporter in all of Africa now relies on food aid to feed itself and the average life expectancy has dropped from 60 under White rule to 37 under Mugabe.
The ANC government of South Africa continues to prop up Mugabe to repay him for his aid to them when they were a rebel group and out of the sense that action against Mugabe would serve to vindicate the white government he fought against.
South Africa and the world at large continue to fail to do the right thing and replace Mugabe with a democratic government. Or at a minimum, with a leader who can make sure none of his people starve to death in what was a major food exporter 25 years ago. And why do they fail to do this? Why do African leaders continue to support such a vile despicable man? Because Mugabe seized control of Zimbabwe from Ian Smith, the white leader of the racist minority government that ruled Zimbabwe when it was known as Rhodesia
But honestly now – how bad was Ian Smith? Unfortunately that question will never be honestly debated because the one who answers maybe stepping into a racial minefield and it is for that fear of being painted a racist that people of Zimbabwe will be made to continue to suffer – oh the irony!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7271611.stm
