A bit of the Ultraviolence, or The Mugabe thread

[quote] The men who pulled up in three white pickup trucks were looking for Patson Chipiro, head of the Zimbabwean opposition party in Mhondoro district. His wife, Dadirai, told them he was in Harare but would be back later in the day, and the men left.

An hour later they were back. They grabbed her and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet. Then they threw her into her hut, locked the door and threw a gas bomb through the window.

The killing last Friday — one of the most grotesque atrocities committed by Robert (the absolute fuckhead) Mugabe’s regime since independence in 1980 — was carried out on a wave of worsening brutality before the run-off presidential elections in two weeks. It echoed the activities of Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader in the Sierra Leone civil war that ended in 2002, whose trademark was to chop off hands and feet.

Dadirai Chipiro, 45, a former pre-school teacher, was the second wife of a junior official of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) burnt alive last Friday by Zanu (PF) militiamen. Pamela Pasvani, the 21-year-old pregnant wife of a local councillor in Harare, did not suffer mutilation but died later of her burns; her six-year-old son perished in the flames.

About 70 local MDC supporters gathered in Patson Chipiro’s small yard in Mhondoro on Wednesday, 90 miles south of Harare, to protect him. Inside the hut where his wife of 29 years died, women sang softly to a subdued drum beat next to the cheap wooden coffin. The thatched roof had been destroyed in the fire so they sat under the open sky. The lid of the coffin could not be closed because Dadirai Chipiro’s outstretched arm had been burnt rigid. Her charred hand was found as women swept the hut.

Patson Chipiro, 51, a small, determined man, arrived from Harare on Friday afternoon to find his three brick huts ablaze. “I was trying to put the fire out,” he said. “I thought my wife was hiding in the bushes.”

His four-year-old nephew, Admire, heard him calling her. “He ran to me. He said, ‘Auntie has been beaten and they threw her in the fire.’”[/quote]
It is wrong to assassinate the leaders of countries. It is wrong to assassinate the leaders of countries. It is wrong to assassinate the leaders of countries.

Democracy in Africa, the Robert Mugabe way. :astonished: :frowning:

Yeah. Wouldn’t it be nice if the US, Britain and Europe wanted him out and weren’t content to just pay lip service to shocked outrage while sitting by and watching him destroy his country.
Hey, though, they’re only Africans, after all.

Not to mention the lack of oil.

We need Team America, The World’s Police Force. Fuck yeah.

So, America needs to take the lead on this one too? Why can’t someone else man up and take this a-hole out?

Oh that’s right, then you wouldn’t be able to bitch and moan about it if some innocents get hurt in the process.

Mugabe got to get in line. Next is Iran, then Syria, N. Korea, Burma, Venezuala, and Tonga.
You have evil regime? We will change it. You better believe it. That’s change you can believe in.

no one wants to upset Mugabe because he’s supported by the Chinese. Iran and Syria, yeah, maybe. N Korea, and Zimbabwe? think again. the parallels are unfortunate (both fascist states led by jumped up little men, intent on starving their people into submission so they can prop up their little penises, sorry, state pomp and ceremony and all their faux little entitlements, such as bags of caviar and classical music played while their glorious army marches around in shiny hats and boots looking glamorous).

and Tonga, Dr McCoy? Tonga?

why is that evil den of iniquity and ineptitude last on your list, my good doctor?

Signed: the merry band of happy Tongans for an iquitious and eptitudinal democracy.

[quote=“urodacus”]no one wants to upset Mugabe because he’s supported by the Chinese. Iran and Syria, yeah, maybe. N Korea, and Zimbabwe? think again. the parallels are unfortunate (both fascist states led by jumped up little men, intent on starving their people into submission so they can prop up their little penises, sorry, state pomp and ceremony and all their faux little entitlements, such as bags of caviar and classical music played while their glorious army marches around in shiny hats and boots looking glamorous).

and Tonga, Dr McCoy? Tonga?

why is that evil den of iniquity and ineptitude last on your list, my good doctor?

Signed: the merry band of happy Tongans for an iquitious and eptitudinal democracy.[/quote]
My fault. Tonga was supposed to be down in the fine print with Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Doctor McCoy, why do they call it “space medicine?”

Apparently you haven’t figure it out yet but we only do Arab bad guys. The rest don’t have anything to worry about from us.

[quote=“JMcNeill”]So, America needs to take the lead on this one too? Why can’t someone else man up and take this a-hole out?

Oh that’s right, then you wouldn’t be able to bitch and moan about it if some innocents get hurt in the process.[/quote]
Erm, I know it’s difficult to tell right now, but Europe and the UK are not actually America. On paper, at least. :wink:

Here’s another direction to point the blame, if you believe Hitchens. I don’t know about his answer, but it is a good question. Maybe he has been speaking out and I just haven’t heard. :idunno:

[quote=“Christopher Hitchens: The Lion Who Didn’t Roar; Why hasn’t Nelson Mandela spoken out against Robert Mugabe?”]By his silence about what is happening in Zimbabwe, Mandela is making himself complicit in the pillage and murder of an entire nation, as well as the strangulation of an important African democracy. I recently had the chance to speak to George Bizos, the heroic South African attorney who was Mandela’s lawyer in the bad old days and who more recently has also represented Morgan Tsvangirai, the much-persecuted leader of the Zimbabwean opposition. Why, I asked him, was his old comrade apparently toeing the scandalous line taken by President Thabo Mbeki and the African National Congress? Bizos gave me one answer that made me wince—that Mandela is now a very old man—and another that made me wince again: that his doctors have advised him to avoid anything stressful. One has a bit more respect for the old lion than to imagine that he doesn’t know what’s happening in next-door Zimbabwe or to believe that he doesn’t understand what a huge difference the smallest word from him would make. It will be something of a tragedy if he ends his career on a note of such squalid compromise.
[/quote]

Hitchens is absolutely right about that, unless Mandela is so ill that he just isn’t coherent anymore. And let’s face it, the last time we saw him in public, in London, at the dedication of some monument or something, he didn’t look like he had much time left. (At least that’s the last time I saw him… )

But if he’s well enough to dictate a memo to a staffer, he really ought to be slamming this thug Mugabe, publicly and in the strongest language possible. It’s amazing how many people jumped on George Bush for a natural disaster like Katrina, yet not nearly as many people are willing to be vocal about a man who creates a perpetual Katrina in his own country.

And finally, can we all agree that the UN is the biggest farce in the history of farces? Allowing Mugabe to joint hat food summit in Rome … I hope Bush’s last act as president is to evict the UN from New York. Let them set up shop in Harare.

When was the last time a UN sec-gen had any balls? Is Margaret Thatcher available?

all african leaders are complicit in the sheltering and tacit approval of that butcher, not just Mandela. Thabo Mbeki in particular.

he may be the biggest voice of ‘conscience’ in africa, but he’s certainly not played this one well at all.

while you’re complaining about the UN, what about putting the boot into the sham that is the AU? what the hell are THEY doing about this? where’s their legitimacy?

what the UN needs is an emasculation of the veto-wielding big five. then there’d be some reall chance to get shit done, instead of the inevitable split US and UK vs China and Russia. one nation, one vote, no veto… that’s the way it should be.

and Mugabe? his assasination should have been carried out years ago. it’s still not too late though: it would not be so difficult to send a tomohawk his way, and if you happened to take out his entire cabinet while you’re at it, that’d be an ideal parting gift to the world, pres Bush.

You get no argument from me about Mugabe’s assassination… But I’d go one better when it comes to removing the veto of the big five on the UN security council. I’d like to see the US withdraw completely from that ridiculous organization.

Alas, we will not. We’ll continue to provide diplomatic immunity and nice, Upper East Side apartments for the Mugabe’s of the world.

I can’t really speak about the AU. Africa does not interest me enough to get that into this discussion. It gets old, hearing the voices of Africa whine about the things they do to themselves. Any people who defend cultures where men can rape widows and steal their cows and do God knows what else… I have no time for those places or the people who try to justify the ‘traditions’ of such a wonderful place as Africa. I was done with the African thing after “Tears of the Sun” came out. Enough already.

I get hyped over Mugabe because here is an obvious thug who doesn’t get half the crap heaped on him that Bush gets, yet he’s an out-and-out criminal who has done not a single thing to benefit anyone but himself during his 28 years in office. Many of the people who have blood coming out of their ears over Bush give Mugabe a free pass because he’s black, African, or whatever.

Part of the blame, it has to be said, has to fall on Zimbabweans, who elected this crackpot in the first place years ago, then stood by while he ran roughshod over the country and its consitution. Aren’t there 20,000 people in that country willing to fight back?

Or maybe because he matters a lot less than Bush to “those pleople”?

If I were an US citizen and had to pay for Bush’s policies in money, blood and self respect then I maybe would also have blood coming out of my ears over that. Mugabe on the other hand: “Some thug who butchers locals in some far away country.” People who, as you already pointed out may not really do their share to better things to begin with.

As for Europe - I can not recall Mugabe ever asked me to invest into things like the Iraq misadventure. Bush had been harping for donations to that failed 3rd world program Iraqi Freedom of his for years already.

That’s may be why Mugabe gets a pass. He bothers all of us a whole lot less.

maybe he bothers you a whole lot less, but then you’ve probably never been to Rhodesia. Sorry, I mean Zimbabwe. when you’ve travelled there and had friends living there, you’ll think differently. once a lovely place, full of resource, potential, and smiling happy well-fed people, but like so much of Africa, harbouring a festering evil that was just waiting to sprout on fertile ground.

not that i’m belittling the Iraq issue you try to compare it with, mind you.

but you can’t say " oh, he’s only killing his own people in a shitty little country no-one really cares about" and absolve your guilt so easily. that’s the start of the same slippery slope that allowed the world to congratulate Mao and Hitler. and countless other tin-pot despots.

oh, ever noticed the weird little Hitler moustache the dictator sports? never used to be such a bad thing… Charlie Chaplin had one too. but now, anyone wearing a moustache like that just has to be doing it in honour of his hero, that syphilitic drug addict Adolf, the quarter Jewish boy afraid of his heritage. what skeletons does Mugabe hide in his closet?

Cue for German hysteria about Bush to cover up past Hitlerite crimes against the entire world (for real)

But you are not and you are not paying for anything, not even really for Germany’s defense, which you get pretty much for free from the US nuclear and military umbrella. Yet, we listen to your nation’s ministers and politicoes bleat about human rights and when it comes to doing something about them… um… Germany cannot get involved in Zimbabwe, why? Is Bush stopping Germnay from doing something like (chortle chortle) send troops?

Spoken like a true German! (haha)

Well, looks like things are turning around quite nicely in Iraq… So the misadventure term may be inappropriate. More inappropriate still would be to bleat about Mugabe when far greater atrocities were occurring in Iraq and Saddam had the ability and intention to cause a whole lot more. Think oil prices are high now? Imagine an Iraqi nuke placed in the Saudi oilfields and the whole world having to negotiate deals with a resurgent Saddam.

That merely underlines the ignorance, hypocrisy and blatant subjectivist hysteria that clouds the average European mind (cough cough) these days.

Probably - but that’s the point. I did not and I have not. Like pretty much most people from the US or Europe.

Which guilt please? Is it my fault that the best Zimbabwe came up with in the end was Mugabe? Or Iraq with Saddam for that matter? In particular when I look at this other comment you made. You seem to be pretty aware of how much the third world makes its own bed:

So let me ask again: Why exactly should I or the average American or European bother about a 3rd world tinpot dictator who has pretty much zip nil capacity to have any meaningful impact on our lives at all? Just for clarity: I am talking about the likes of Mugabe or Saddam. Not about Hitler or to a certain extend Mao who actually each ruled a nation with a bit more punch than some backwater third world state.

Except that neither Hitler nor Mao were mere tinpot dictators. Differnt from Iraq or Zimbabwe the likes of Nazi Germany and to a lesser extend Red China were real threats to the Western world. How serious do yourself take these “Iraq is a threat as big as Nazi Germany” or “Mugabe has the potential of Red China” comparisons to begin with?

You of course can now lament that for the most part people only care about themselves and only bother about something when there is something in for them in return. But one way or the other you need to come to terms with that, because this is how things run. This of course sucks for your friends in Zimbabwe, but without Mugabe becoming a real threat to our way of living you will have a hard time getting any real support to get rid of him.

In lieu of that you probably at best will receive some foppish moral outrage fuelled by vanity rather than compassion about the situation in Zimbabwe. I for my part will at least spare you that.

In case there are any Brits out there who would like to sign, I have a petition on the number 10 website aimed at Mbeki. Chances of it causing the British government to grow a set of balls and call Mbeki for what he is - a criminal who has aided and abetted Mugabe’s crimes against humanity - are slim to nil but if you don’t try you certainly don’t get.

Anyway the link:

petitions.pm.gov.uk/MbekiMugabe/