This is a Professor Bates topic.

There are still white farmers in Zimbabwe? How stupid can anybody get?

You mean there are foreign women from Zimbabwe involved who want to get married to fat, balding, over-the-hill mysogynists?

Mugabe is mad, and has been for ever. I had family (White Brits) there for generations. They left, of course. Are there still some there? Are they mad? Are they trying to survive that maniac?
No way.

How stupid can anybody get?

Well...

They could wage a small-scale genocidal campaign against operators who actually produce something with their land, steal the land from them, subdivide it, and then give it back to gut-eaters whose only interest or claim to it is a generations-old grievance.

And then said gut-eaters can turn a herd of goats out onto their 50 acre "birthright", sheep off the grass cover, erode the topsoil, and collectively turn what use to be a productive 2 or 3 thousand acre farm into a fucking wasteland.

That's how stupid anybody can get.

Sounds vaguely like what we did to the native americans...and now a good chunk of the land is shopping malls.

Stupid indeed.

YEAH!

Notice how its always a "waste land" when a non white is on land!

Yup, the "gut eaters" should just be happy that whitey came and is nice enough humor them with a few trinkits and leave it at that!

must be election time.
idi amin threw out the middle class indians and pakistanis from uganda in the early 1970s and handed over their businesses to cronies and mistresses. the country has never recovered.
jerry rawlings menaced the mercantilist lebanese in ghana in the 1980s. it took the country 20 years to recover some semblance of the 20th century.
mugabe has killed, driven out or silenced white zimbabwean farmers since the mid 1990s. zimbabwe is wracked by hyperinflation and continuous food shortages.
there's no pattern here of course. scratch that.
the REAL pattern is that each of the above leaders stayed in power for at least a decade or more, benighting their people and/or beggaring their nations. typical african narrative. but if you buy a Bono stenciled motorola phone, it'll all turn out fine and dandy.

and btw,
there's nothing wrong with eating gut.
can taste a bit rubbery when boiled but it goes down smooth enough.
redneckville,
the whitey argument is stale; they shafted themselves as much as the colonialists did. present-day whitey just takes advantage of them, ie with gifts of cars, whores, flight tickets, swiss/BVI accounts, paid-up plastic surgery bills etc (cf stella obasanjo, the first lady of nigeria's recent demise).
africans read 'people' magazine and watch MTV too.

Yo DATA...aren't y'all proud of me...son showed me...so easy...i guess you can teach an old farmer new tricks!

The sad fact of the matter is that those to whom the Mugabe Administration has given the confiscated land are many generations removed from modern farming techniques. Consequently, agricultural output has dropped to a critical level. The reduction in exported agricultural products has led to massive inflation and a shortage of hard currency in Zimbabwe. These problems are compounded by massive droughts and a widespread AIDS pandemic. The average life expectancy in Zimbabwe is roughly 34 years for men and 37 years for women.
By almost any measure Zimbabwe is a complete disaster, none of which seem to interest the Mugabe Administration so much as implementing its disastrous policy of quasi-nationalistic land redistribution. Whites are leaving in droves and with them goes an awful lot of expertise. The corrupt Mugabe regime will very shortly have such a serious problem on its hands that it will be forced to use massive violence against its own people in ordfer to preserve itself.

oh my..."Regular droughts have decimated crop yields in various parts of the continent since 1970. The scientists' models reveal consistent and marked warming of the Indian Ocean, " Now wasn't that when so many scientists said we were entering an Ice Age...so which was it????Man made global warming? ice age? man made global warming?ice age?aaaggghhhh...just can decide!

"Notice how its always a "waste land" when a non white is on land!"

It's a fact that this country is now in starving because this confiscated land has been mismanaged. Whatever happened in the past the land in question was now the livelyhood of new generations of white farmers who provided for their own country anyway.

Bullshit any way you look at it.

DOGMAN

It's a fact that this country is now in starving because this confiscated land has been mismanaged. Whatever happened in the past the land in question was now the livelyhood of new generations of white farmers who provided for their own country anyway.


Come on Dogman, you can't possibly expect Redneckfuck to comprehend that argument. White people are always taking from brown people and we never give anything like aid, food or medical treatment to them.

And on the off chance that we ever start giving things to brown people, we'll only do it to get them to make $100 sneakers and $300 tv's.

"Come on Dogman, you can't possibly expect Redneckfuck to comprehend that argument. White people are always taking from brown people and we never give anything like aid, food or medical treatment to them."

LOL, I agree with Redneck often but I do think he's a little off on this one.

Africa is a really fucked up place. It's a shame really, it could be really cool. I would like to go some day. Hopefully the whole place won't be completely destroyed before I get the chance.

DOGMAN

pray4mojo,
was'nt 'land reform' one of the central elements of dispute in the handover discussions between smith's rhodesia govt and ZANU-PF?
mugabe has stalled for years on the issue and never implemented it. it was only when the white farmers withdrewal political support from ZANU-PF and joined morgan tsanguri's opposition movt. that suddenly land became an issue.
and who were the principle beneficiaries? the bush war veterans, whose political support mugabe needed to overcome the growing opposition movt. they could'nt distinguish a plow from a tractor.
people like squatter 'leader', chenjarai 'hitler' hunzvi who later ended up 6 ft under, courtesy of AIDS, god bless 'im.
it's also important to mention that mugabe has suffered reversals in central africa (congo and DRC), where zimbabwean army 'advisors' to savimbi and rebel hutu groups have been captured and killed. zimbabwean army formations deployed to aid savimbi prior to his death, returned in disgrace, unable to plunder much of anything because of poor equipment and rampant AIDS in the ranks.
there is a steady stream of refugees to SA from zimb'we, especially of young males who escaped the coersion of being press-ganged into maurauding, ZANU sponsored gangs that intimidate opposition members by rape, murder or uninvestigated beatings/robberies.
this is all entirely predictable by looking at mugabe's educational resume. he holds 8 degrees and has studied extensively the marxist methodology of clinging onto power.

Bush alert! The Bush doctrine insists that the President has the authority and moral duty to attack tyrants anywhere in the world at any time. Too bad for W we don't have the resources to carry out that doctrine. Otherwise the next incursions would be into: Zimbabwe, Iran, Burma, Syria, Sudan/Darfur, Venezuela, Cuba, Belarus, Russia, and who else? Saudi Arabia, Libya, Algeria, Congo, China? Big cajones W? Cheney? What's next for the W Doctrine of national security?

Africa is a really fucked up place. It's a shame really, it could be really cool. I would like to go some day. Hopefully the whole place won't be completely destroyed before I get the chance.


Agreed.

From one end of the continent to the other, the place is absolutly hosed, and there's some validity to the argument that "white" imperialism did its part to put Africa in this state, but white folks can't bear the entire burden.

a last point which people may ponder is this; zimbabwe, burma and north korea(and iraq, were saddam not removed) form examples in which it is obvious that terrible dictatorships exist. the challenge is how to deal with these kinds of countries. i don't believe there exists credible commentators/scholars that suggest we invade every single one of these countries. iraq was a unique case, driven imo, by a very narrow set of considerations and ideologues/ideologies.
burma and zimbabwe are real challenges (so is sudan in it's own way) to the foreign policy intelligentsia. and quite frankly, i hav'nt read anything that can remotely equate to a methodology of dealing with such 'problems'.
iraq has taught us that it seems better to empower the locals to take action, but how do you do that when the security apparatus of the state is so ruthless? perhaps, since it ain't our problem, we should ignore it? seems to me like there's no easy solution to this type of situation.

"and there's some validity to the argument that "white" imperialism did its part to put Africa in this state, but white folks can't bear the entire burden."

I think having a tribal culture thrust into the modern technological age with no real guidance has alot to do with it. Seems to me cultures really must evolve with the technology in order not to have this sort of catastrophic effect. It can certainly be partially blamed on white colonialism but to a certain extent I think it's inevitable.

DOGMAN

IMO our biggest concern should be to curtail the spread of Islam in these vulnerable regions.

"It's the economy stupid" that's the best way to moderate the situation. Prosperous countries are happy and less likely to decend into chaotic brutality, people simply have more to loose and are less desperate and less susceptable to manipulation.

DOGMAN

When I was a freshman in college (1960), one of my professors had several albums (33 rpm latex records, remember them?) that had been recorded thruout africa by a person that wanted to capture the music of africa before it was completely corrupted by white music. I wish I could remember the name of the albums and the recorder. It included a rendition of "A mighty fortress is our God" that sent chills up and down my spine tho I was not and am not a christian or even a deist. There is no doubt now that such a recording could ever exist again. Africa has been completely corrupted - whatever chance Africans had to create their own world is gone. Whites tend to forget that it took them thousands of years to create the common law that grew into representative democracy. Africa is where we were 3000 years ago but with modern weapons and with resources that whites will pay them blood money for.

OLDFART, My thoughts exactly.

DOGMAN

capture the music of africa before it was completely corrupted by white music

Oh God, the irony.

Sounds vaguely like what we did to the native americans...and now a good chunk of the land is shopping malls.

Stupid indeed.

Posted by Alexandrite

So, do you want to go back to living in tents, hunting buffalo with spears, and burning buffalo shit to keep warm?

"A mighty fortress is our God" -sounds like something the white christian missionaries took to africa, to me.

Oldfart tell me if I'm wrong.

I think having a tribal culture thrust into the modern technological age with no real guidance has alot to do with it.


I was sitting at my computer the other day at work, running a couple batch scripts. I got up and walked to get a coke from the machine and thought to myself..."the technology we've developed has surpassed our ability to understand it". I'm not really sure what that means, perhaps a topic for a different discussion.

Anyway. It's not just technology. The world has taken it upon itself to police everyone else. We in America do it by imposing our form of government on others because we think it's the best, but it's not the best for everyone.

A few hundred years ago, we didn't set out to educate the ignorant. Our problem is we won't let emerging nations grow at their own pace. We have to bring them up to our level quickly.

We end up with shit like Africa. One group gets their hands on advanced weaponry (compared to spears and rocks) and they're able to dominate the backward bushmen who just want to be left alone.

that had been recorded thruout africa by a person that wanted to capture the music of africa before it was completely corrupted by white music.


I have to take exception to the "white music" comment.

If you were around in the 60's, then you should know that rap, rock, punk, ska even metal has its roots in Black Gospel music and Blues.

I wouldn't call that "white music".

Don't get hung up on his using the adjective "white." He was speaking about the recording of music that was unique to uncolonized Africa before western musical forms infiltrated into the musical zeitgiest there. Tonal timbres and melody scales were unique to the dialects spoken by different tribes. Drums and rhythm were a language unto themselves. Dance was also a part of the ritual musical structure, as it was all tied into the same traditional methods of expression. Western music has the luxury of old musical transcriptions to get an idea of what, for example, the repertoire of a lute player might have included in the 14th century. It's a shame that we will never know what African music sounded like six centuries ago. We can hear hints of it in the handed down music that survives today, but I would have loved to have heard it in it's unadultrated pre-colonial form.

And not to nit pick, but the blues didn't come from Africa. Gospel and blues are musical forms unique to the black experience in America, which borrowed heavily from both influences, African and european, to create their own signature sounds. Modern popular music today is simply an amalgom of a wide variety of styles and is still evolving.

Tunde,

Absolutely correct. Sub-Saharan Africa is a disaster on so many levels, it boggles the mind. It has essentially been partitioned (much like the Arab world) into nations on the basis of old colonial borders, without regard to indigenous ethnic homogeneity. This fact, coupled with a pervasive, continent-wide tendency towards Third-World political corruption and the encroachment of Islam into Christian and Animistic territory,
guarantees that the entire region will suffer in abject misery for decades - if not centuries - to come. Of course, AIDS/HIV and even much more exotic diseases will continue to decimate the African population at an alarming rate. Is my memory correct that in some areas of Africa the mortality rates exceed the fertility rates? I am no conspiracy theorist, but it certainly gives one pause when one considers the complicity of the West, if only by omission of action, in the ruination of the African people (although significantly not at the expense of natural wealth). As you imply in your piece, Marxism is no more an answer to the problem than Islamism or any other "Ism," as far as I can see.
No nation on earth currently has the will or the interest to impose the cold, hard discipline in the region necessary to cure it of its rot. -Mojo

kerrin,
there's a quid pro quo to the aid given; oftentimes it's a way of ensuring support for some UN vote or other, or, on the ground, to counter soviet/now chinese influence etc. other times, it's a business bribe, plain and simple. the third category is the development aid.
those townhall columnists never mention that. it's always the rather simplistic notion that all money given to the zambians or congolese or burkinabes is/was well intentioned aid cash. for example, paul kagame of rwanda was supported by US aid grants given to Uganda whilst he was in exile. "so what?" you may ask. well, he's now the central character in great lakes geopolitics, an area that had previously been the sole preserve of the francophone sphere of influence.
townhall won't tell you that.