Well, this takes the cake; a former (white) Rhodesian liberal has now said that “Mugabe was rotten from the start” (Sunday Times, September 23).  Of course, Judith Todd is able to say that safely from the comfort of her home in peaceful, prosperous New Zealand.  She and her father (Sir Garfield Todd – a former Rhodesian Prime Minister) were instrumental in bringing about Mugabe’s rule in Zimbabwe way back in 1980.  From 1965 to 1980, they did their best to undermine Rhodesia’s long war against Mugabe and his communist Chinese trained and armed terrorists.  Now Miss Todd says that the British Government should never have allowed Mugabe to come to power in the first place!  This is why I get so angry with Liberals – they have a vision but never have to face the consequences of their Utopian Ideals.  God protect us from these people – look what they did to Zimbabwe.
And a (London) Sunday Times columnist, Rod Little asks “Why pick on Mugabe when Africa is teeming with tyrants…” Well to some extent he has a point; but then I don’t expect him (or anyone else who hasn’t lived there) to know that Zimbabwe and South Africa are very different to the rest.  Most African states were merely British or European colonies – their indigenous inhabitants living primitive, subsistence lives as they had done for centuries before.  There was only the barest minimum of infrastructure and these colonies were ruled direct from Europe or Britain through locally based British or European administrators.
But Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) was ruled by Rhodesian settlers, not colonial administrators.  So Rhodesia had first world infrastructure, a thriving economy, and high levels of education for the whole population.  Black-owned businesses competed with white-owned business before 1980 when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.  Black Rhodesians owned land privately (in addition to traditional, communal tribal land ownership) and a black middle class had emerged.  It took Mugabe’s ruling Marxist party over 20 years to destroy this solidly-built economy, infrastructure and people.
Black Africans living in the former colonies never enjoyed this high standard of living and so lost less than the Zimbabwean people have.  They were already living subsistence lives and their limited economies became only somewhat worse than before the colonialists abandoned them to their fate.
So far, Zimbabwe has escaped that other scourge of post colonial Africa – wholesale slaughter in tribal and/or religious warfare.  Instead Mugabe has practised silent, creeping genocide – Zimbabwean people of the wrong tribe and/or political persuasion, have been hounded to their deaths or killed outright, but little is known about it.  That’s much less upsetting for World Media and the liberals who called for “self-determination” in Africa.
I pity all those decent Africans (black and white) who have suffered and are still suffering the consequences of liberal interference in African affairs.  Western Liberals are to blame, but I doubt if they are suffering like the Zimbabweans are.
END
Peter Davies was a soldier in Rhodesia from 1963 to 1975, where he took part in the capture and interrogation of terrorists. Davies’ novel, Scatterlings of Africa, is based on his own experience in the war, and personal observations of how terrorist activities impacted Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and its people.