An invasion of Zimbabwe wouldn’t help anyone, I get tired of explaining. It was his role in the struggle for independence that won Mugabe the people’s trust in the first place, and it was through selling out to become the local enforcer of the IMF that he lost it in the mid 90s.
There’s a standard response to this kind of objection: do you want another Rwanda? Surely those savages wouldn’t have been able to kill each other in such numbers if the civilised folk of the “International Community” had rolled in with tanks and bombs.
Well, a report’s just come out from the Rwandan government, accusing France of directly aiding and taking part in the 1994 genocide. To what extent the report can be substantiated remains to be seen, but it has long been accepted that France, at the very least, turned a blind eye to what was being done by it’s proxies. “At a minimum”, says Amnesty International. Those who issued the report are and have been closer to the US. The rivalry between the francophone and anglophone empires have long been played out along ethnic lines, and those ethnic divisions, in turn, were at the very least exacerbated and entrenched by the Belgian Empire’s own version of apartheid rule.
So no, I don’t want to see another Rwanda. Ever. That’s why the boys in blue berets need to stay well away from Zimbabwe, Darfur and all. What Africa needs is not intervention from above, but revolution from below.
Via the comments in that Lenin’s Tomb thread:
Does anyone still disagree with me that immigration controls are racist?
Nope. Not many white South Africans or Australians in detention centres, are there?
As for Zimbabwe, I suspect the outcome might hinge upon the outcome of the presidential elections in S. Africa and the path Zuma takes – he’s recently criticised the crippling sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe, so he’s making it clear there will be no invasion if he becomes president.
Whether Tszangirai decides to distance himself from the Western Powers and enter a coalition govt with Zanu-PF – who knows? For sure that’s not a move that would be welcomed by Britain or the US, and he’d risk losing his halo…
Na they’d love it. The cop and the Thatcherite together at last, and next to no independent political organisation to challenge them. They’d love it.
I really don’t think so – if Tsvangirai enters a coalition, it will be from a position of weakness. He won’t be in a position to guarantee unfettered investment into the country.
I disagree. What is stopping Mugabe from acting as the IMF’s enforcer, as he did in the early 90s? The answer, popular resistance, which has now found it’s political voice in (ironically) the MDC. An alliance would be beneficial to both the “international community”, represented by the MDC, and the Mugabe regime. Everybody wins – except the Zimbabwean people of course, until they start fighting back again independently of the MDC.
You could be right, but I can’t think of any other ex-enforcer who becomes an enforcer again, if you get what I mean. One example could be Gaddafi, who has recently come in from the cold, but Libya wasn’t integrated into the global capitalist economy in that it wasn’t open to foreign capital after he took power. Perhaps Mugabe thinks he can end up like Gaddafi, a relic tolerated by the imperial powers?
As of now, it looks like Tsvangirai will become PM, with exact powers to be decided. The US, EU, etc, have made it clear that they don’t accept Mugabe as legitimate president, nor Zanu as governing party. The MDC is already split between two factions, one led by Tsvangirai, the other by Arthur Mutambara. The Mutambara faction backed Simba Maconi in the presidential election, such is the enmity between the two groups.
I think Zanu-PF’s strategy is to neutralise the MDC by incorporating it, continue with the “look east” policy of inviting chinese investment to replace that of EU countries and the “indigenisation” programme of creating an indigenous bourgeoisie – it’s the impression I get from the state newspaper, anyhow.
That sounds about right. Of course this is a multipolar world again, and having alienated the West Mugabe can always fall back on China and co. But I still think Tsvangirai will get right back in with them.