President Robert Mugabe’s speech on Saturday made it quite clear that he is becoming increasingly willing to resort to anarchy and violence in order to gain political popularity and retain power.
His warning to farmers that they must not retaliate or expect police protection when confronted with violence by axe-wielding mobs of thugs bent on destruction has to be the most dramatic warning that there is an urgent need to deal with the situation in Zimbabwe before it becomes another bloodbath and expensive United Nations peace-keeping exercise.
While he was making his statements to the nation, three of his Cabinet ministers were trying to convince the world press in Malawi that the rule of law exists in Zimbabwe and that everyone has a right to the protection of the police.
A live broadcast on SABC Africa news on the same day from a farmer in Zimbabwe told of events taking place on the ground while the president spoke. Twenty farmhouses were reported to have been ransacked by thugs while another four were already under threat.
The police refused to act on the grounds that they had no transport and when offered transport refused on the grounds that they were not allowed to travel in private vehicles. The farmers were reported not being allowed to leave, or more correctly flee, the area, by illegal road blocks set up by the thugs. The farmers’ efforts to evacuate women and children by light aircraft was stopped by a refusal to allow the aircraft to take off due to a fly-past for the president.
Mugabe has effectively declared war on the people of his own country.
Do not be misled by the land issue. There are constructive options available to the land issue which would solve the problem while at the same time enhance food production. Mugabe has chosen a negative, destructive option regardless of the damage to food production and the economy simply because there is more to gain on the political front.
What must happen in Zimbabwe before the international community will take notice and act?
Events to date have already created a situation where there will be a food shortage, which has been deliberately caused, and there will be a lot of starving people without food aid. Surely the international community does not need yet another food rescue operation, particularly for a country capable of being self-sufficient in food.
Must there be a bloodbath before the international community takes any serious notice of events in Zimbabwe? Or does the international community not actually care in the slightest about the events that are taking place in Zimbabwe?
Need you be reminded that all it requires for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing? Your lack of action will make you responsible for future events which could well match the worst horrors of the African continent.
To the international community. Uganda you did nothing. Rwanda you did nothing. Nigeria you did nothing. The Congo you did nothing. So why should you do any more or show any more concern or action over Zimbabwe? Learnmore Ndlovu, Harare
Mugabe is a threat to the entire population of Zimbabwe. We have entered the global community which he has completely ignored. Please give your country back to the young and to the intelligent, regardless of colour, creed and religion. Brown, black, white and yellow need each other to survive the momentous changes ahead changes that Mugabe has never been equipped to implement. Tor Benson, San Diego, California
@Communism is not to blame
Professor Sean Archer’s declaration that the communist countries collapsed because of their economic inefficiency (Letters, August 10) needs to be checked against facts. Apart from some countries in Eastern Europe which have received enormous European Community/Nato investment, after 10 years of capitalism all of the countries making up the old Soviet Imperium are in a disastrous economic state.
Other countries which enjoyed mixed economies (such as South Africa before 1980 and some in Latin America before the 1970s) or had central, authoritarian-led intervention in the economy (such as the “Asian tigers” before 1990) also suffered economic decline relative to previous rates of development after they installed “free market” capitalism. Meanwhile, two of the few countries to have retained a nominal commitment to the command economy at some level, Cuba and the People’s Republic of China, have suffered nothing like the same level of failure.
Recall that 10 years after its “second revolution” (which caused no intrinsic socio-economic disruption), Russia is an economic basket case with an utterly corrupt political system. In contrast, 10 years after the USSR ended a devastating civil war (which reduced industrial production to less than 10% of pre-revolutionary capacity) Stalinism had restored the USSR to something approaching the power of Czarist Russia. It would seem that socialism is not necessarily an inferior economic system to capitalism (particularly to the monopoly-finance capitalism practised in the West since the 1970s).
Comments like Archer’s are no doubt easy to make in an avowedly anti-communist newspaper and in the current ideological climate. However, because his comments are politically motivated, wild generalisations which are obviously questionable to any independent mind, they cast doubts upon his scholarship. By association, they thus cast doubts upon the practice of economics, and upon academia in general. I do hope he will be more responsible in future. Mathew Blatchford, University of Fort Hare, Alice
@Dipico not involved in bugging
The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) takes issue with the way your newspaper has covered the hearing into the alleged invasion of Tebogo Mogorosi’s right to privacy.
The first report (July 27) notes: “Last week the Human Rights Commission summoned Northern Cape Premier Manne Dipico to answer allegations that he invaded an employee’s privacy by monitoring telephone calls” in a story which suggests that bugging is on the increase.
The second report (August 3) said: “… Dipico denied tapping the telephones of his employees, although he had been given a taped conversation of one staffer.”
Both these reports seem to suggest Dipico had been involved in tapping.
The allegation that the premier had come before the commission to deal with tapping of a telephone is a gross distortion of facts. The commission has consistently maintained that it sought clarity from Dipico on a particular recording, which had at some stage come into his possession.
At no stage whatsoever has it been suggested by the commission or the complainant that the premier had bugged his phone. In fact this was placed on the record at the very outset of the hearing on August 2. Your journalist was late at the hearing and it is regrettable the story was presented in such a distorted manner. Phumla Mthala, media liaison, SAHRC
@Hack off
I am confused about the content and extent of the proposed censorship [Interception and Monitoring] Bill.
My concern is that we will have a group of state-sponsored hackers who will be able to intercept any Internet, e-mail or cellphone messages.
Our police and security forces, who have not established a reputation for being “white knights” when it comes to corruption, will, on the face of it, be able to develop a lucrative trade in selling confidential business information through accessing credit card and bank account numbers. CPD Ogilvy, Durban
@Let technikons continue doing what they’re good at
In your Getting Ahead supplement (August 3), the claim is made that technikons are South Africa’s “future MITs”. The notion of turning technikons into top-rank research universities like MIT requires serious examination.
A research university aims to attract students with good abstraction skills: the ability to think beyond what’s current, and invent new theories, technologies, modes of thought and so on.
Technikons, historically, have aimed at developing concrete, hands-on skills. Some of our technikons are extremely good at this.
What happens if we try to respin technikons to a very different educational niche? First, they have to put huge resources into reskilling staff, which detracts from their existing mission. Second, the pool of students with the necessary abstraction skills is not adequate even for our universities. Third, the already tiny pool of research funding gets stretched to nothing.
If we want to increase the pool of graduates with higher degrees, let’s attack the real sharp problem first: inadequate output from the schools.
The Department of Education has a plan for this, supporting 100 science high schools, but even that will only deal with universities’ needs.
The likely outcome of pushing technikon research is destroying existing top-class institutions by spreading resources too thin. Philip Machanick, school of computer science, University of the Witwatersrand