Posted on 08/14/2002 6:54:20 PM PDT by Clive
A DEFIANT President Robert Mugabe this week threatened to hit back at the United States and the European Union (EU) for isolating him over his controversial policies, vowing to brook no obstacles in what he termed as Zimbabwe’s “second transitional march to development and sustainable growth”.
But analysts warned Mugabe, one of Africa's remaining old school rulers, that he was rapidly recreating out of Zimbabwe another Zaire under dictator Mobutu Sese Seko or Idi Amin's Uganda, a caricature of Africa's basket cases.Ross Herbert, a senior researcher on Africa at the South Africa Institute of International Affairs, warned that Mugabe's controversial land reforms risked degenerating into a "wholesale peasantisation" of Africa's best agricultural sector if inadequate resources or skills are not given to newly resettled black peasant farmers.
Speaking during the burial of his former finance minister Bernard Chidzero at the weekend, Mugabe ordered the country's white commercial farmers to surrender their land without delay to landless black peasants.
About 3,000 white farmers face jail or a fine or both if they do not obey the eviction orders, which took effect last week.
Vowing "no battle too hard to fight for this land", Mugabe threatened retaliation against the EU, the US, Switzerland, New Zea-land and Canada for imposing sanctions on him and his officials for their land policies and a March poll which most of the world says Mugabe won fraudulently.
Herbert said: "There is a risk of peasant farming spreading across the country, leading to food shortages. China learnt this lesson some time ago that land reform must lead to a more modern and productive system of agriculture."
Zimbabwe is already in the midst of its worst food crisis, which is blamed on Mugabe's disruptive land policies. Without Western food handouts, six million people or half the country's population could starve to death.
Mugabe says his seizure of white farmland is a moral obligation to right unfair land distribution caused by British colonialism under which less than 5 000 whites owned 70 percent of the best agricultural land while more than five million blacks were cramped on poor and arid soils.
Drawing parallels with the late dictator Mobutu, Herbert said all the other ingredients of another Zaire were already in place for Zimbabwe - once a beacon of hope for Africa - to become yet another basket case.
Zimbabwe is experiencing hyperinflation. The government's domestic debt of more than Z$300 billion and foreign debt of nearly US$5 billion continue to mount. Inflation is pegged at 114.5 percent, while poverty and unemployment are at more than 60 percent.
The economy is crumbling. Every basic food commodity including bread, sugar, salt and the staple maize is in short supply.
Herbert said while Mugabe continued with his "defiant rhetoric against the international community", Zimbabwe would increasingly look like Mobutu's Zaire because there was no solution to Harare's rapidly deteriorating economic and political crisis.
"(We are looking at a situation similar to Zaire) with no fiscal prudence or discipline, shortages of nearly everything and with everyone becoming a predator, requiring to be paid a bribe first before they do their job or duty," the analyst said.
University of Zimbabwe political scientist Masipula Sithole described as irresponsible Mugabe's threats to retaliate against the West, whose economic aid Zimbabwe sorely needs to revive its economy.
"Here we have a landlocked Zimbabwe, divided along racial and political lines and with half its population starving, threatening to conquer and punish the US and the EU. This defies all rationality," Sithole said.
Mugabe, who rejects charges by Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Western nations that he stole the March ballot, says sanctions against him and his top officials are attempts to usurp power for the MDC.
He says his government is working on a comprehensive list of retaliatory measures against the 15-nation EU, Washington and their allies, possibly targeting their interests in the African country.
Mugabe did not specify the measures that are likely to be taken by his government, which has also been suspended from its membership of the Commonwealth, a club of Britain and its mainly former colonies, for the flawed ballot and violence against foes.
Said Sithole: "Mugabe's defiance recalls one character in east Africa in the 1970s. He was called Idi Amin.
"He was so defiant in his castigation of the British and other perceived international enemies that I do not know if he thinks he succeeded, but he is now living in exile in Saudi Arabia. What Amin did succeed to do was to leave behind a wasteland."
Africa IS a basket case.
The article uses the word "controversial" twice to describe Mugabe and his policies.
Mugabe is not "controversial"; Mugabe is Mao's Cultural Revolution, Fidel's nationalization, Stalin's pogroms.
Mugabe uses the engineered famine of Mao, Staline, Kim Il Sung/Kim Jong Il, et al.
Western food handouts?
Better to send a team to retrieve Mugabe's head and hands in bags, and return the farms to the farmers.
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