Babobski’s Blog: News and opinions from South Africa and around the world

The War in Gaza is reaching a new stage.  Thousands of Israeli reservists have been called up, indicating the ground offensive is being expanded into the cities.
 

Below:  An entire block is flattened in Gaza.  1 000 people have been killed, nearly 250 of them children

Below:  An Hamas rocket damages an Israeli apartment building.  Israel is coming under internation pressure for the disproportionate response to Hamas rocket fire

Below:  Debris and smoke fill the air in Gaza as the war continues.  Yet there are still fewer casualties in the war than the number of victims the cholera outbreak has claimed in Zimbabwe

Below:  Protesters around the world, including South Africans have been demonstrating in the streets against the war in Gaza.  Malaysian students can be seen marching in the following picture.

Below:

David vs Goliath…except this time round, Israel is Goliath………Palestinian youths with slingshots take on the Israeli army.

Photos:

www.yahoo.com
www.time.com

 

The death toll in Gaza has risen to 769 and just over 3000 people wounded. Without trivializing the Gaza invasion at all, that is just under half the number of people who have died of cholera in Zimbabwe since October 2008.

 

 

Attacks are still being carried out in Gaza, despite the acceptance of  United Nations resolution 1860 for a cease fire in Gaza that would lead to the withdrawal of Israeli troops.

Above:  An Israeli attack

Above:  A Palestinian surveys the wreckage of his home.

Above:  If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as being a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man.  All men are frightened.  The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.  The courageous man is the man for forces himself, in spite of his fear, to carry on.

Quote : General Patton

Israeli ground forces getting bogged down in mud.

Below:  Street fighting Israeli style.

Photos:

www.yahoo.com

In 2000 Mugabe started with his program of genocide. He started with the few remaining white people who were farmers. Rhodesians, who had bought into the new country and were proudly Zimbabwean. They were producing the grain and the tobacco that had lead to Zimbabwe being able to export food to Sub Saharan Africa and sell to the international markets.

 

The Zimbabwean economy was thriving and the Zim dollar was stronger than the rand in the late 1980’s. Mugabe was ruling a country that could rightfully claim to be the “Breadbasket of Africa”.

 

The very people who were responsible for the “Breadbasket” became the innocent victims of genocide. Sure they received encouraging words from the British and the Americans when Mugabe started with land invasions in 2000. The jaw war continued well into 2001, while the Zim economy started faltering and the world was shocked at the violence with which old people were being evicted from their farms and some even murdered.

 

Then 9/11 happened. The airplanes being flown into skyscrapers will be the most striking images I will probably see in my lifetime. The Asian tsumani is the other major impression in my mind, of days that changed the world forever.

 

(Above:  The twin towers during the 9/11 attack)

 

In an instance Zimbabwe was off the radar. Mugabe had won the stand off. He had been telling Blair for how long now that Zimbabwe was no longer a colony and that Mugabe quite frankly couldn’t be bothered with anything that little Bush and Blair had to say.

 

The world’s media became filled with images of the Twin towers, Osama Bin Laden became the most wanted man in the world and America was at War.

 

The War on Terror had had little impact in Southern Africa. Corruption and scandal still emerged from South Africa on a continual basis and Mugabe, after sorting out the perennial enemy, the white man, started climbing into his own people, who happened to be called the MDC. This political party became the first real opposition to the Mugabe rule.

 

Mugabe proceeded to ruin Zimbabwe. Foreign currency had dried up and the economy was into tailspin. A famine resulted and the Mugabe regime began to use food as a political weapon. Supported by the Chinese and to a lesser extend by Libya, Mubage kept buying weapons and oil to survive. He knew that South Africa would never ditch him, so his supply of power and access to the sea were secure.

 

 

(Above: Robert Mugabe when he came into power in 1980)

 

Thabo Mbeki seemed to be bound by unwritten rules when it came to dealing with Mugabe. Mugabe always seemed to have the upper hand and Mbeki retreated into the vague policy of “quiet diplomacy” and even blocked action against Zimbabwe by the United Nations when South Africa was sitting on the UN Security Council.

 

Mugabe’s nose was put out of joint by the Mandela persona and he felt that Mandela had usurped his rightful position of Father of the liberation movement in Africa. Mubage has survived five US presidents since winning the independence election in 1980.

 

Bob was the big daddy of African leaders and he let Thabo Mbeki know that. When the world sent Mbeki in as the front man to deal with Mubage, it was like sending a Grade One pupil to tell the Headmaster how to run the school.

 

Mugabe simply ignored Mbeki and continued as the weapon of mass destruction in Zimbabwe.

 

In 2008, when the world again had time to focus on Zimbabwe, the question of land distribution was fait accompli. Nobody even mentioned the dispossessed as a stolen election and a huge cholera outbreak caused more words to emanate from America and Britian.

 

America described Mugabe as being out of touch with reality and the British said that Mugabe was an obstacle and that a solution was not possible with him involved.

 

Ears pricked up in Southern Africa. Would Zimbabweans who were scattered around in surrounding countries like South Africa and Namibia be able to return home and rebuild their country? Was Mugabe eventually being given the boot? Even Bishop Desmond Tutu said that a military invasion must be considered in removing Mugabe.

 

And then timing played a part again. Israel invaded the Gaza strip and the same media that made such a huge noise that 1000 people had died of cholera are now deafening silent that nearly 2000 people are dead now and many more infected.

 

Are Israeli, American and Palestinian lives more important than Zimbabwean lives? Robert Mugabe seems to think so. He has killed more people through the cholera outbreak than have died on both sides in the Gaza War so far and yes, the eyes of the world are fixated on the Middle East and Zimbabwe has slipped off the radar yet again.

 

Mugabe has survived this type of thing before. 9/11 and the loss of American lives meant that white farmers in Africa were being robbed of their land didn’t have as much meaning anymore. This time he simply informed Bush and Blair that they mustn’t think Bob was stupid. The announcement was made that Bob knew the cholera outbreak was a biological warfare assault against Zimbabwe but that he was ready to repulse a military invasion.

 

Mugabe understands that Little Bush is no longer relevant and that Brown will be focused on the Middle East as black Africans die in their thousands from cholera.

 

Mugabe has just left Zimbabwe on a month long holiday to an undisclosed overseas destination. He has told the opposition he is tired of their games and will form a new government when he comes back. Timing has once again come to the rescue of Mugabe and he has seized the moment. Zimbabwe burns while the Father of the Nation goes shopping and partying around the world.

 

Palestinians flee from an Israeli air strike.  Over 500 people are now dead in the  Gaza offensive.

Sticks and stones won’t hurt my bones………………….Palestinians arm themselves with stones and take on the Israeli army.

But my guns will surely break yours……..On the Gaza border, two Isreali soldiers in the quiet moment before all hell will be unleashed.

.

Suffer the women and children….the longer the ground war in Gaza continues, the more the innocent will suffer…….a Palestinian child injured yesterday in Gaza.

Eyes that have stared into death….there are no winners in war…..even when you win………An Isralei soldier involved with the door to door fighting in the cities of Gaza.

Stop the war in Gaza protestors give George Bush the shoe as the president is giving himslef a farewell tour around the world, telling everyone about the good job he has done and the progress that has been made in Iraq and the Middle East.

Pictures:

Jerusalem Post

www.jpost.com

www.yahoo.com

O Zimbabwe Zimbabwe…….our hearts go out to our brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe. The Chimurenga ( Shona word for “struggle”) that Robert Mugabe has unleashed on the people of Zimbabwe had had a heavier toll on the country than anything Zimbabwe has seen in the past. Not even Ian Smith could have wrecked Zimbabwe the way Robert Mugabe has, plundering the treasury and running a country into the ground. All that is left is the rubble of the first revolution.

 

It was heady times in 1980 when Zimbabwe became a democracy. The winds of change were truly blowing across Africa when Robert Mugabe won the election and the breeze was definitely felt in South Africa where the last white government of an African country was huddled. A school mate of mine, Daniel De Leo wanted to hitchhike to Zimbabwe to watch Bob Marley play at the independence celebration in Zimbabwe. He didn’t get there but he did hitch to Swaziland to catch Peter Tosh live a few years later.

 

 

(Above:  Bob Marley, the king of reggae who performed at Zimbabwe’s  independance celebrations)

Robert Mugabe seemed to be reasonable man in the early days. I mean any president who hung out with Bob Marley must be pretty cool. Could you imagine BJ Voster or PW Botha chilling with Bob in Tuinhuys? There was no backlash or revenge towards his former enemies and Zimbabwe became a success story. The Zimbabwe dollar was worth more than the rand at one stage and the country became known as the breadbasket of Africa.

 

So what went wrong then and why did Robert Mugabe descend upon this path of madness and genocide against his own people? He was well respected and well received around the world. Yet the signs were there in the early 1980’s but the world chose to ignore the Matebele Massacres.

 

From 1982 until 1985, Mugabe used his North Korean trained Fifth Brigade to crush any resistance in Matabeleland. It has been estimated that 20 000 Matabele were murdered and buried in mass graves which they were forced to dig themselves and thousands of others were allegedly tortured.

 

The violence ended after ZANU and ZAPU reached a unity agreement in 1988 that merged the two parties, creating ZANU-PF leaving Mugabe in a position of unquestioned power.

 

2000 was a watershed year for Zimbabwe. It was 20 years down the line for an independent Zimbabwe and it was time to reflect and have a look at what had been achieved during that period of post colonialism.

 

And then the madness started. White owned farms were repossessed and occupied by so called war veterans. The economy went into tailspin and the currency collapsed. All Mugabe would do is rant and rave that he was not scared of the Bush and Blair show and that he would still be ruling when they long gone. On that point he was certain. Mugabe has ruled for 28 years now, the longest standing president in the world. He has been in power since Jimmy Carter was president of America and speaks of Big Bush and Little Bush when referring to the US presidents.

 

Nobody quiet knows how many Zimbabwe refugees there are in South Africa, let alone the rest of the world. They have fled poverty, starvation, police brutality and disease as the world once again stands by and watch a country disintegrate.

 

 

The situation in Zimbabwe was foretold about 50 years ago by Frantz Fanon, whose theories about the consequences after colonialism have proved remarkably prophetic.

 

Fanon wrote the Wretched of the Earth in 1961, and saw what independence and nationalism was doing to post colonial Africa.

 

Fanon argued that the future will have no pity for those who, “possessing the exceptional privilege of being able to speak words of truth to their oppressors, have taken refuge in an attitude of passivity, of mute indifference, and of cold complicity”.

 

The kind of person needed in was those able to deal with its problems of grinding poverty, greed and corruption, rampant unemployment, poor nutrition, destructive sexual abuse, and so many others.

 

Yet many African leaders did not live up to this ideal, with Mugabe joining leaders like Idi Amin who brutalized Uganda in the 1970’s right up to the modern day war zones of Dafur, the Congo and Somalia.

 

Leadership failure leads to rulers and ruling parties oppressing their people. Fanon highlighted leadership failure, ranging from the activities of ruling parties to those of the heads of states. Because of their failures and lack of accountability, ruling parties and heads of states threaten the people.

 

Mugabe uses the police to threaten the people of Zimbabwe and has stolen an election in March 2008. His paranoid attitude towards the rest of the world and the MDC could be due to the fact that he knows that he failed to address to issues that have crippled Zimbabwe.

 

The army and the police constitute the pillars of the regime. The strength of the police force and the power of the army are proportionate to the decline in which the rest of the nation is sunk.

 

Instead of welcoming expressions of popular discontent, instead of taking the free flows of ideas from the people to the government as its fundamental purpose, the ruling party forms a screen and forbids such ideas.

 

When the masses raise their voice after realizing that they have made sacrifice for change and nothing has changed; the torture machine of the dysfunctional state is mobilized against them.

 

There are serious lessons that South Africa also needs to learn from Fanon’s words. Thabo Mbeki was removed from the position of State president by the ANC, who accused him of stifling debate within the ANC and ruling autocratically

 

In his book the Wretched, Fanon says: “Before independence the leader generally embodies the aspirations of the people for independence, political liberty and national dignity”. Yet soon after independence is declared the leader reveals his inner purpose, that is, to become the general president of the company of profiteers impatient for their returns who then become the new elite.”

 

What would happen if Mugabe was removed overnight, due to an international regime change, he died or if he were to the toppled in a palace coup?

 

The ruling classes, whose members supports the leader and are essentially preoccupied with the pleasures of everyday life paid for by the government, would be left in a quandary.

 

They would not know what to do after their leader is gone. The leader has considered himself as the father of the nation. He is unchallenged and if an attempt is made to challenge him, those involved are kidnapped or accused of treason.

 

Should Mugabe die or be pushed out of office, a power struggle would take place within Zanu. Whether another election would be free and fair is debatable as many within ZANU will be worried about charges being brought against them for crimes against humanity.

 

An international invasion of Zimbabwe has many risks and we not talking about the Zimbabwe Defence Force. The invasion of Iraq was the easy part for the Americans and so would an invasion of Zimbabwe.

 

There would be an occupation while elections are being put together. Strange things happen to a country when an invading force is running the show. The occupiers may decide they have a favourite and may not even want to leave.

 

Zimbabwe does not need to suffer more. Mugabe likes to see himself as the father of the nation. Take that respect away from him. He must be shunned and humiliated until he is gone. The military option must also be put on the table.

 

And as Bob Marley sang 28 years ago to the people of Zimbabwe…”Get Up…..Stand Up…..Stand up for your Rights……”