Talk:Robert Mugabe/Archive 1

Some writers had a bit of an NPOV problem.

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As of Feb 3 this article still needs some serious attention!

The quote "Mugabe has been criticised by some Westerners for his intervention in the civil war in the Congo." is not accurate, or helpful. He has been criticised by many in his own country too. Why are the Westerners singled out, and who are they? What reasons do they give?

And in: "Mugabe has pushed his long stated aim of handing over large tracts of land from whites to blacks by allowing the occupation of white-owned farms by black war veterans. Less than 4,000 whites, ex-backers of Ian Smith's racist regime, owned more than 70% of the country's arable land. "

The war veteran terminoligy is problematic, as most so-called war veterans are unemployed youths. The official line is that land is handed over to landless blacks, not just war veterans. The unofficial line is that land is handed over to Mugabe cronies. These aspects need to be explored.

Also, when does the 4000 whites owning 70% of the land refer to? What are the statistics now? Were all whites owning lands supporters of the racist regime? What about mention of the supposed connection between the removal of the farmers and mass starvation?

Read something objective for once. You'd find that the statistics were correct. You'd also discover that there is a connection between PREDICTIONS of mass starvation and a DROUGHT plaguing the entire region.

I've been busy lately, so my contributions lately have been slowed. I foward to a new blitz shortly.

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 * He was born a 'shona', [Mugabe has said that he is not a Shona. His father is believed to be either from Malawi or Zambia and even his second name Mugabe does not sound Shona at all]

the above is a) confusing, and b) what is a shona anyway? why is it important whether he is or isn't one? -- Tarquin 13:01 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)


 * The Shonas are the ethnic group that account for around 80% of the population. No rewrite is needed. 172

Clearly, it is: the average reader does not know what a shona is. Nor does he know why he would deny his being one. And last of all, square brackets in that context are incorrect. -- Tarquin 15:43 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)

No rewrite necessary. Just state that they’re the majority ethnic group in Zimbabwe. In fact, I’ll do that right now.

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Danny has written a blatantly propagandistic introduction to the Robert Mugabe article. He says that he’s ‘calling a spade a spade.’ Frankly, this is an admission to violating NPOV guidelines.

Quoting only sources hostile to Mugabe’s land reforms is inappropriate in an introduction. Saying that he’s been rejected by the “international community” is also inappropriate. Since when did the Western ex-colonial powers account for the entirety of the international community?

The introduction reads like a middle-schooler's essay explaining why he hates Mugabe.

Instead, this article needs a more encyclopedic introduction along with a balance of opposing viewpoints if it quotes opinions regarding Mugabe’s presidency.

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Then give the opposing viewpoints--calling out POV when you erase everything about Mugabe that you find troublesome is a sophomoric approach. Why is it that the most biased people love to holler POV? ... Danny

--

This sentence is fine: "Because of his controversial policies, Zimbabwe has been refused participation in the Commonwealth" because it conveys fact, not opinion. Other than that, the introduction doesn't need to be Danny's little essay against Mugabe.

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Danny is correct -- NPOV means that different views are properly attributed. Calling a properly attributed viewpoint you do not agree with a violation of NPOV guideline shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the NPOV principles. Please read them again. If you think other opinions need to be included, by all means include them. But including a properly attributed opinion is NOT a violation of NPOV. Please note that removal of attributed opinions which you do not like, however, is a violation of NPOV, and thereby a bannable offense. So stop it, now.--Eloquence 16:36 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

You can quote opponents of his land reforms all you want. But there has to be an equal balance of quotations countering those points. If you want them included, find quotations expressing an alternative viewpoint.

In the meantime, let’s keep the propaganda out.

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 * That's not how things work, 172. If you feel that there are alternative opinions which need to be included, it is your obligation to find and include them, properly attributed. Or would you expect someone who writes an article about the Holocaust to give a summary of all the arguments made by Holocaust revisionists? Amnesty International is a reputable, attributed source, and their opinion needs to be included in this article.


 * Please note that if you continue this behavior, a complaint to the Wikipedia administration will follow, which will likely lead to you being banned. --Eloquence 16:45 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

How typically Mugabe--deflect all criticism on the land reform policy (which, by the way, I happen to think can be reasonable). That way we ignore his efforts to quash the opposition and establish a one-party state (rejected by his own ZANU party), his oppression of ZAPU, MDC, his reneging on promises to the white minority, his persecution of homosexuals. At least you are consistent with his own approach. Danny

- “Because of his controversial policies, Zimbabwe has been refused participation in the Commonwealth” says everything. The readership isn’t stupid. Stupid people don’t read articles online pertaining to Mugabe.

-

Saying that he’s been banned from the Commonwealth is enough.

Refrain from hyperbole too. Mugabe’s not Hitler and land reform’s not the Holocaust.

Amnesty International is also a Western organization with little understanding of the historical realities of the Third World.

And you cannot disconnect his “autocratic” policies from the land reforms. The latter necessitates the former.

To understand that, you need a grounding in the historical realities of this country.

Before 1980 Zimbabwe was a white-supremacist British colony that went by the name of Rhodesia, after the British financier Cecil Rhodes, whose company, the British South Africa Company, stole the land from the indigenous Matabele and Mashona people in the 1890s. British soldiers, who laid claim to the land by force of arms on behalf of Rhodes, were each rewarded with nine square miles of land. The Matabele and Mashona -- those who weren't killed defending their land-- were rewarded with dispossession, grinding poverty, misery and subjugation. Today, in a country of 13 million, almost 70 percent of the country's arable agricultural land is owned by an elite of some 4,500 mostly white farmers, many descendant from the British soldiers who Rhodes blessed with a claim to stolen land, to pass down the generations.

After a long campaign for national liberation, independence talks were held in 1979. Talks almost broke down over the land question, but Washington and London, eager for a settlement, agreed to ante up and arrange for financial support for a comprehensive land reform program. If you were going to return land to the peasants who had been working it -- the rightful owners -- you'd have to compensate the white landholders. But the assistance, and therefore, a workable land resettlement plan, was never forthcoming.

That was a problem, because the land issue was largely what drove the struggle for national liberation, and has remained at the heart of Zimbabwean politics since. Unresolved, it festered.

Frustrated, and under pressure from war veterans who had grown tired of waiting for the land reform they'd fought for, Mugabe embarked on a course that would lead him headlong into collision with the IMF and Western governments. He passed legislation enabling the government to seize nearly 1,500 farms owned by white Zimbabweans, without compensation. As Zimbabwe's Foreign Affairs Minister, Dr. I.S.G Mudenge put it, at that point "all hell broke loose." Having held free and fair elections on time, and having won them, Mugabe now became international goat and pariah, on the wrong side of London, Washington and international lending institutions. A dictator, a stealer of elections, a thug. That was to be his new guise.

The first thing the EU did was commission a study. The study concluded that Mugabe would have to go, forced out by civil society, the union movement or NGO's, uprisings in the street, maybe even a military coup. "By hook or by crook, but mostly by crook," Mugabe would be ousted.

On 24 January, 1999, a meeting was convened at the Royal Institute of International Affairs to discuss the report. The theme of the meeting, led by The Economist's Richard Dowden, was "Zimbabwe - Time for Mugabe to Go?" Mugabe's "confiscating" of white-held land compelled an unequivocal answer to the conference's rhetorical question: Yes. Dowden presented four options:

1) a military coup;

2) buying the opposition;

3) insurrection; and

4) subverting Mugabe's ZANU-PF party.

On March 23 of that year, Washington weighed in. The US State Department held a seminar to discuss a strategy for dealing with the "Zimbabwe crisis." Civil society and the opposition would be strengthened to foment discontent and dissent. The opposition would be brought together under a single banner to enhance its chances of success at the polls and funding would be funnelled to the opposition through Western backed NGO's. Dissident groups could be strengthened and encouraged to take to the streets. The same plan was to work later in Belgrade (naïvely celebrated today by a large part of the US left as a model of grassroots, non-violent, change from below.) It could work in Harare.

Opposition leaders were told to put their differences aside and unite under a single banner. Washington would bankroll their campaigns, and fund NGOs and civil society to put pressure on the government. In Zimbabwe, the electoral opposition coalesced under the banner, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Of course, none of these opposition groups had any special claim to being democratic, but the appropriation of the democratic cache was intended to make it seem that the government was authoritarian and antidemocratic, a case of the pot calling the kettle black.)

Under these circumstances the reviled leader is caught between a precipice and pack of dogs. Allow the massive interference of Western governments to go unchecked, and forfeit the only chance of a free and fair election. Take steps to limit the interference and give your opponents ammunition to step up the charges that you're authoritarian and antidemocractic.

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 * While I appreciate different perspectives, I do not appreciate copy & paste research, especially when not attributed. Please write your own comments (and more importantly, your own articles). So, if you wish the above perspective to be included, summarize it in your own words. --Eloquence 17:24 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

What 172 doesnt understand is that this is an article on Robert Mugabe and not on Cecil Rhodes and the history of Zimbabwe. Dietary Fiber

Dietary Fiber doesn't understand history. No historical figure, like Mugabe, exists in a vacuum.

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The Wikipedia is not a vacuum. Please see Cecil Rhodes and history of Zimbabwe. Dietary Fiber

--- I’m sitting here with an Encyclopedia Britannica article on Mugabe and it mentions Cecil Rhodes. A good article too.

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From the article:
 * Before 1980 Zimbabwe was a white-supremacist British colony that went by the name of Rhodesia, after the British financier Cecil Rhodes, whose company, the British South Africa Company, stole the land from the indigenous Matabele and Mashona people in the 1890s. British soldiers, who laid claim to the land by force of arms on behalf of Rhodes, were each rewarded with nine square miles of land. The Matabele and Mashona -- those who weren't killed defending their land-- were rewarded with dispossession, grinding poverty, misery and subjugation. Today, in a country of 13 million, almost 70 percent of the country's arable agricultural land is owned by an elite of some 4,500 mostly white farmers, many descendant from the British soldiers who Rhodes blessed with a claim to stolen land, to pass down to future generations.

Dietary Fiber is 100% right. The above para is not about Mugabe but about Zimbabwe history. 172 please remember which subjects you are writing about. This article is supposed to be about Robert Mugabe ; what he has done and how people view him. He is also a controversial figure so we should report on why people think so (and state the main people behind those views is possible). I'm going to remove passages in this article that are not directly about Robert Mugabe or directly related to what he has done. Historical context is important but the amount of text in this article devoted to that is excessive -- while reading the text I had to remind myself a few different times what the subject of the article is. --mav 21:41 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)


 * OK, I gave it a go. I've removed text that was only really about Zimbabwe history and modified other text in order to make it obvious that it pertains to Mugabe's direct influence. I've also added a bit on the perspective of white settlers on Mugabe's policies. I've also re-added the phrase to the topic sentence that mentions that many people view Mugabe as a totalitarian leader. To my knowledge this is in fact correct. But I did not restore the specific charges that followed that statement because it isn't, IMO, appropriate to go into that much detail in the introduction and that having that info in such a prominent position unbalanced the article by giving people a unnecessarily bad initial impression about Mugabe when the intro should be more neutral in tone. This text was also a duplicate of text at the end of the article. IMO this article is more in-line with NPOV now than it was before. I hope that this edit war is over now and WikiLove has been restored. --mav

--- I’m quite happy with Mav’s edits.

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If you look closely at the photo on this page, you can see Mugabe's shadow! neat huh? Dietary Fiber

-- Just to correct a common misconception: Mugabe’s not a totalitarian ruler.

Zimbabwe is still a parliamentary-type multi-party democracy in which opposition parties are legally allowed to exist, function, organize, and stand against government candidates in direct elections. While Mugabe has taken actions that are arguably extralegal or illegal to subvert and harass opposition parties and NGOs, no opposition can legally function under totalitarian regimes, which suppress all opposition to their single-party monopolies. The ruling ZANU-PF Party, in stark contrast, barely has a majority in parliament and ZANU-PF has not fared well in recent competitive elections. Would Stalin (a real totalitarian ruler) face a direct election against an opposition candidate?

Although Mugabe has displayed some autocratic tendencies since the land reforms began, Zimbabwe’s theortically a British-style democracy and comes fairly close to functioning like one. And I’m sympathetic to Mugabe given Zimbabwe’s historical realities. After all, the lack of press freedom for media spewing propaganda on behalf of old colonialists and the white farmers is hardly the major problem facing a country in which up to a third of the adult population is dying of AIDS. I can’t see him moving toward essential land reforms without stifling the opposition, funded and advised by the white farmers and Western governments and NGOs, extralegally.

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You are joking, 172. Close to functioning like a British style democracy? Come of it. A friend of mine, all left wing marxist, was an election observer at the last election. He went down to Zimbabwe convinced that Mugabe was getting a bad press. He has worked as an observer in 19 countries. He said he never came across more corruption. Entire villages (anti-Mugabe naturally!) disappeared from the electoral register. Anti-Mugabe areas where the polling staff challenged every voter. He couldn't understand why until the end of the time period came. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds in that one polling station could not vote because the station had to close. And the reason they could not vote was because all the challenges took up so much time that the time the conveniently ran out. Voting boxes disappeared. A fellow observer saw a soldier threaten to blow a woman's head off if she didn't vote for the President. One ballot box fell and broke open one hour after polling started. One hundred and four people had voted. Five hundred votes fell out of the box. When he complained about what was obviously a fix, a gun was put to to his head and he was told if he told anyone about it he would be going back to Ireland in a coffin! He came home, having gone out as a Mugabe fan hoping to prove that everything was fair, opening saying that he had not watched an election, he watched an utter con. A complete and utter scam, with widespread intimidation, voilence and vote-rigging in the region he was in. Other observers went then all met up together came back with varying reports; some found what they said was 'just about' democrat, but certainly would not be tolerated in any other true democracy (not even Florida!). But many reported systematic scams. And when they left their hotel, one person went back to get something he had left behind. He found a military man dismantling listening apparatus in their rooms.

As to a free press, there is no free press, the first fundamental requirement in any state purporting to be a democracy. Putting guns (plural) up to a head reporter for a newswire is not a free press. Burning opposition newspapers' printing presses is not a free press. And forcing left wing pro-African news reporters to be smuggled in across the border from South Africa and risk their lives to try to report what was happening. One journalist is so highly regarded that he is a friend of Mandela and can get instant access to Gadaffi, yet was told he would be shot on site if he entered Zimbabwe.

Re your comments - ''the lack of press freedom for media spewing propaganda on behalf of old colonialists and the white farmers is hardly the major problem. . . I can’t see him moving toward essential land reforms without stifling the opposition, funded and advised by the white farmers and Western governments and NGO'' that is almost an identikit definition of dictatorship. In any case, most NGOs go into Zimbabwe sympathetic to decolonization. And are disgusted by what they find Mugabe is doing. I speak from personal experience, as I have family members involved in aid agencies who have been trying to get aid into areas affected by famine. Mugabe was so determined to cover up the deaths of hundreds of thousands (a conservative estimate, BTW) due to famine that aid workers were shot at to keep them away from famine-striken areas. Protecting Mugabe's image as a leader who does not have famine in his state (let alone due to his polices) is so important he is willing to let hundreds of thousands of people die, even though aid agencies could save their lives. Mugabe also has bank accounts in Europe (many of them now frozen) which can only explained by massive fraud. One account alone is alleged to have more money in it than he could earn in 500 years as President of Zimbabwe. Mugabe once headed a state that was was of Africa's success stories that was feeding people in neighbouring countries. Now it has become a basket case, unable to feed its own people but covering up the fact, even if that costs their lifes. So much for a democracy or a leader who deserves anything better than a gaol cell for what he has done to his country and its wonderful people. STÓD/ÉÍRE 23:51 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

1995 elections results for 120 seats in Parliament (there are 150 seats all told): The rest of the seats are by appointment, including 12 appointed by the president and 8 for provincial governors (guess who they go to). How is this "barely a majority"? Danny
 * ZANU-PF:    117
 * ZANU-NDONGA:  2
 * Independent:  1

Danny:

(The below comments are strictly editorial)

First, I believe those parliamentary figures are outdated. I’ll check.

Second, I stand behind what I said.

If there are competitive, multiparty elections to be rigged in the first place what you have in Zimbabwe is closer to the British model than the Stalinist model. Regardless, food, vaccination, preventative medicine (don’t forget the AIDS crisis) shelter, and clean water are more important than a free press in a country as impoverished and underdeveloped as Zimbabwe. White Americans, in contrast, seem to care more about their rights to fund veiled pro-racist NGOs in Zimbabwe than about the material well-being of a over ten million improvised Zimbabweans.

I’ll be honest. Mugabe shouldn’t have abandoned the single-party state in the first place. That’s what left Zimbabwe open to outside interference, which has really been destabilizing the country. I want Mugabe to subvert the self-serving, neocolonial opposition as much as he can in order to offset their funding advantage provided by greedy, greedy colonialists. He can’t surrender Zimbabwe’s long struggle for national liberation begun when British troops (the ancestors of those 4,000 or so pseudo-aristocrats) massacred nearly everyone in Matabeleland’s military in Bulawayo their 1890 "preemptive" attack. Just because the white farmers figured out how to legitimize the illegitimate under the guise of “free elections,” with that treasonous MDC puppet potentate, Mugabe does not surrender his heroic cause.

It’s a about time we’re seeing unemployed youths, aspiring bureaucrats, and war veterans taking back what was stolen from their people in the first place. They’re not all Mugabe cronies. Some are, though; and they’re even preferable to what you had before. Regarding the white farmers and their ex-colonial overlords who fund the opposition, no fair-minded person should have an iota of sympathy for those racist parasites.

And you can’t develop Zimbabwe’s economy without taking these difficult measures. You can’t have vibrant capitalist development in such a latifundia economy in which 4,000 racist pseudo-aristocrats own 70% of the arable land in an agrarian country of 13 million. Given the resistance, the expropriation process had to be haphazard. This will cause hardships in the short run, but once things have stabilized productivity will have recovered if Mugabe is able to fend of the enemies of the Zimbabwean people.

I wish sell-out Mandela and Mbeki and their ANC had the courage and resolve of Mugabe and his ZANU-PF.

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With respect to the comments above regarding voting in Zimbabwe, I do wonder what would happen if foreign inspectors observed US voting. You know, Russia has stated that US elections should be monitered by the UN because the US has too much power for its elections to be run wily-nily, I guess I agree with the Reds. Dietary Fiber

I am a born white South African and regrettably know and understand the concept of apartheid and other forms of oppression as I spent five years living in Germany and the U.S. What really bothers me though is that international media coverage is poor and lacks constant reports. The whole world (except maybe southern Africa) seems to not truly understand the human sufferings that are currently experienced every day. Political reforms and aid are being manipulated my Mugabe which effects the Zimbabwe in such a manner that they actually die. ABC, FOX, CNN, BBC, SKY news… whatever, are hardly reporting on a realistic bases which I believe is totally unjustified.