Steyn: Happy Zimbabwe Day!!

[The Village Idiot]

FGL: One Man Majority Rule!

http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/3163/26/

excerpt

On April 18th 1980, the Union Flag came down in Harare and the last Governor of Southern Rhodesia, Lord Soames, transfered executive power to the first Prime Minister of independent Zimbabwe. On the thirtieth anniversary of Zimbabwean "freedom", how's it working out?

Zimbabwe didn't have to be like this. "You have given me the jewel of Africa," Robert Mugabe told Ian Smith, his notorious white racist predecessor, at independence in 1980. Actually, at one point Africa had quite a lot of jewels. But through the Sixties and Seventies decolonization delivered the continent into the hands of Afro-Marxist kleptocrats-for-life who reduced viable economies and some of the richest farmland on the planet to an impoverished coup-wracked dump. Mr Smith was a racist but he was not an incompetent and, a generation after Zimbabwe's neighbors had achieved and squandered independence, he bequeathed (albeit reluctantly) a going concern to Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party.

Mr Mugabe then got to work. In 1990, after one decade of Zanu-PF stewardship, the arrangements put in place by Lord Carrington at the Lancaster House conference were still holding, just about. In 2000, after two decades of Mr. Mugabe's rule, per capita income had fallen by half, inflation was running at over 100% and unemployment at 60%, and the government had no idea how to correct any of these lamentable developments except by forcing white farmers off their property and turning productive land to dust. Today, after three decades, there's no point running any economic numbers: Zimbabwe is off the charts. Last year, the central bank introduced a new 100 trillion dollar banknote. The following month, concerned that the numbers were getting too long to print on any regular sized bill, they had another currency revaluation and removed 12 zeroes from the Zimbabwean dollar: One trillion dollars is now worth one dollar. Unemployment is around 95 per cent. Maizer and soya production have fallen by over half since 2000. There are fewer white farmers to blame. Many were murdered at the urging of Mugabe, and, as is traditional, after hacking up the landowner and his missus the killers then eat the cattle and clog up the irrigation ditches with their carcases and sit and watch as the land returns to dirt, and somewhere at a international agency a bewildered economist tries to figure out why food production falls when a working farmer is replaced by a machete-wielding goon. Those fortunate landowners who aren't dead are mostly fled.


excerpt

[franksolich]

This always needs repeating.

According to United Nations statistics of the time, during the 1960s, 1970s, blacks in white-ruled Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa had the highest wages, the highest standard of living, the highest quality of health and medical care, of all blacks in Africa south of the Sahara.

This is NOT to defend minority rule or apartheid; it is ONLY to point out the abysmal quality of life that exists in Africa south of the Sahara, in all these black-run black countries.

[vesta111]

This always needs repeating.

According to United Nations statistics of the time, during the 1960s, 1970s, blacks in white-ruled Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa had the highest wages, the highest standard of living, the highest quality of health and medical care, of all blacks in Africa south of the Sahara.

This is NOT to defend minority rule or apartheid; it is ONLY to point out the abysmal quality of life that exists in Africa south of the Sahara, in all these black-run black countries.

This is much like the question of, had the white slave owners left their plantations to the slaves to run after denying them education and experience in the day to day upkeep of the land, what would have happend to southern states.

When a parent takes their children and does everything for them, refuses to allow them to make their own decisions or insist on them becoming educated, then moves away leaving the children at home to fend for themselves, it is not the fault of the kids that the roof leaks or the house falls apart.

Society has a habit of marching into lands that are not as advanced as they are. The new people have no interest in the betterment of the society they take over, they are only interested in how they can gain the riches of the land and people.

What do the New people care about anything but themselves, so when the mines run out of ore, everything of value has been looted from that country they  leave these people in the hands of the bully's and ignorant people that have no idea how to put their land back together again.   

It may have taken 3,000 years to developer this land yet it is expected that after complete devastation it to be rebuilt to its original state in 25-50 years.

What a wonderful argument this makes for the last leaders as to why their actions were valid.

 " We gave them everything, under our rule the people were fed and clothed, as long as we were there to dictate their daily lives they had it easy.  We did have problems with some of the misguided population that objected to our rule but we managed to shut them down.  For 150 years we have led them into prosperity and when the population banded together to throw us out and allow them to make their own decisions, we left them only to watch as they dissolved into chaos.   Not our fault these people cannot rule themselves, not our fault the people do not line up in droves to be educated and somehow learn economics, science and technology."