>From ???@??? Mon Oct 02 13:18:08 2000 X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.5 (16) Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 12:53:58 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Anthony Simmons <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Zimbabwe Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>> From: "Narins, Josh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> Subject: Zimbabwe >> (Speaking of bashings, has anyone else been following the >> election in Zimbabwe? Talk about bashings! Zimbabwe is now >> a dictatorship.) >> Zimbabwe has been a dictatorship for many, many years. Mugabe didn't start out as a dictator. He used to be the liberator of Zimbabwe. Even in the last election, there was no indication of election fraud. It's only been in the past few years, when he realized he couldn't win another election (he won the last won by a tiny margin) that he's started suppressing the independent press, encouraging people to kill his opponents. >> However, I really don't know who the MPDC (the opposition) >> was. MDC. Movement for Democratic Change. >> I am SURE the opposition was being funded by European or >> American secret services. Why am I sure? Because Mugabe >> seizes white owned farms (they still have 95% of the >> productive farmland of Zimbabwe, being 5% of the >> population) and doles out the land. Yep. That's the Mugabe propaganda. But the government doesn't grab the land; there's no actual reform program. They just look the other way so that people who want land can kill the farmers or run them off -- mostly done by people who have no other means of making a living. In a country with over 50% unemployment, it's not hard to find desparate people who will do anything to "reform" some land. The Supreme Court told Mugabe that the government has to defend the farmers, but he refused. Hard to call any of that "reform". Nobody in Zimbabwe believes it's anything more than a pretense. >> Too bad he's gotten old, and now only doles it out to his >> cronies. Otherwise, he might have an argument. Actual land reform is a fairly old issue in Zimbabwe. Even his opponents recognize it. But wholesale murder, terrorizing the population, suppression of the press, election fraud, that's what Mugabe is passing off as "reform". Nobody in Zimbabwe believes it, even the perpetrators.
