[MadIvan]

I am sick to death of Mugabe, Mbeki and their ilk. South Korea, Taiwan, et al, show what happens if you stop blaming others for your problems and get on with the job of building the country; however these countries seem to prefer to whinge about everything. Sod them. Let them starve.

Regards, Ivan

[MadIvan]

Bump!

[nopardons]

Couldn't agree mwith you more.

[SaudiDuck]

Absolutely right. Throwing food and money at these backward savages, so that they can breed even greater numbers of backward savages than they could if left to their own devices is, at best, foolhardy. If their governments prevent the farmers from farming their land, then let the stupid idiots eat dirt.

[Timesink]

the New Partnership for African Development (Nepad)

Boy, did they pick the perfect acronym or what? They're all on their "nepads" for Mbeki and Mugabe like an entire continent of Monica Lewinskys.

[Roy Tucker]

Fully agree with your conclusions. I remember Africa in the 1960s, everyone was filled with high expectations after independence. Forty years on, Africa is a series of kleptocracies, many worse off than they were under colonial rule. Almost all of the common people in relative worse shape to the rest of the world than they were before independence. Africans after 40 years have no one to blame but their own leadership for their problems. The leaders want to deflect blame to the West. The West's not buying it anymore.

[backhoe]

Ivan, I'm going to add your post here to these:

CIA -- The World Factbook -- Zimbabwe

First it was Rhodesia then SA now America paying the price of silence.

-A Capsule History of Southern Africa--

Parallels between Apartheid SA & USA today

South African Crime Report

ZWNEWS.com - linking the world to Zimbabwe
... Books & Videos. Degrees in Violence: Robert Mugabe and the Struggle for Power
In Zimbabwe This book tells the story of Zimbabwe from the hopeful era of ...

MPR Books - Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African ...

Title: "Cry, the Beloved Country" - Topics: World/South Africa

-South Africa - The sellout of a nation--

...which is my "short list of information essential to getting past the media spin and ignorance about Africa."

[connectthedots]

"What makes me so angry is that I can see no difference between the wrongs of slavery from the whites and the wrongs of the current system where an unelected black elite exploit just as much," said a Zimbabwean student from Bulawayo.

"A government like Mugabe's has all the bad features of white rule without any of the good."

One short clear, concise statement says it all.

[GVnana]

I've had to good fortune to have several South African friends who long ago emigrated to the States. I'll never forget their stories about dealing with the natives. One in particular:

The family hired domestic help (a common practice) but objects from the household and pantry items were constantly going missing. When the maid was finally caught and confronted, she admitted it, saying that if she didn't steal from the whites and bring her loot to the village at night she would get a beating. Even a cup of sugar would do, as long as she stole it. The family could never convice their help of property rights. They tried to thwart the problem by purchasing items the natives she could take back to the village. But it wouldn't work, because they refuse "gifts" from the whites. I was told this behavior colored every aspect of their dealings with the natives.

[cinFLA]

I am sick to death of Mugabe, Mbeki and their ilk. South Korea, Taiwan, et al, show what happens if you stop blaming others for your problems and get on with the job of building the country; however these countries seem to prefer to whinge about everything. Sod them. Let them starve.

Geez. Whatever did South Korea do to you?

[Billthedrill]

Mr Mugabe's language was very dated, highly reminiscent of redbrick university common rooms in the 1960s.

Or, alas, their concrete counterparts on U.S. campuses right up to today. It's a consequence of following that neat little Marxian theory that nonsocialist government is merely the tool of an entrenched oppressive elite, used to grind the People's faces into the dirt, and hence the latter will be somehow liberated when it's themselves who do the grinding. That's theory. What happens in the real world was sung to us in the Who's Won't Get Fooled Again, "meet the new boss - same as the old boss." Or when Orwell's pigs started looking like humans and the latter like pigs in the last paragraph of Animal Farm.

Of course, it is never the oppressed who end up coming out on top in this way, nor has it been since Lenin decided his "proletariat" revolution could use a little jumpstart from a "cadre" in charge, and that it would be a really neat thing to be part of that cadre. The State that was supposed to wither away instead turned into a monster of corruption, coercion, and confiscation, and a permanent fixture consisting of a vampire kleptomaniac elite. That's a fair working description of Mugabe's boys, and like all kleptocracies, the real trouble will start when there's nothing left to steal.