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Zimbabwe and Democracy By Mugabe is a Marxist and clearly does not believe in Western-style democracy. Neither do Western powers in Africa practise or favour democracy unless their favourite stooge wins. The US presidential elections are an example to Africa of decent democratic practices? The British 'Blair for President' elections, where the working class vote Labour and get a Tory Blair regime, which treats them with contempt, is not much of an example of honest dealing either.
The traditional Africa systems of government are fundamentally non- democratic. Two competing parties, offering gifts and bribes, becomes a bet on who will win, for most voters want to be on the winning side and get favours, i.e. the pork barrel popular in the USA. After an African election the opposition party and its supporters may evaporate for very good reasons. You may be seen as an enemy of the Government.
In theory an African victor should have the interests of all the people at heart, or so the West tell him. The West are very hard on African politicians. They are expected to be perfect. Is the West perfect? Is Western democracy, the real model, suitable for export?
In passing let us note that we are interfering in the affairs of a very small, poor nation. Mr. Mugabe is not a hypocrite. His experience has made him a one-party state Marxist. He has never known democracy or seen a democratic system that was fair to black people. Zimbabwe has a long history of civilisation. In the fifteenth century King Mutata had welded together an extensive empire. At that time the USA did not exist and there was no democracy anywhere in Western Europe.
The arrival of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century destroyed the economy, and a series of wars destroyed the empire. Under new tribal leaders the Portuguese were driven out by the end of the seventeenth century and until the middle of the nineteenth century there was peace and prosperity.
Meanwhile white opportunists arrived and stirred the pot and muddied the waters and, while seeking gold and hunting ivory, stumbled on diamond fields. Enter Cecil John Rhodes who obtains a royal charter and tells the African people that they are now citizens of the big white queen. A white parliament was set up and European immigration encouraged. In 1922 a self-governing colony was proclaimed separate from the Union of South Africa. Most blacks were not allowed to vote, which reminds one of Florida's voting regime.
White supremacy was entrenched by 1930 and a Land Act, which excluded Africans from ownership of their own prime farming land, made sure they got the message. In case they did not, in 1934 a Labour Law prohibited Africans from entering skilled trades and the professions. The only real alternative for the former owners of the Zimbabwean Empire was to work for subsistence wages on white farms. If they were picky, they might choose to go down the mines or into cheap-labour factory work.
By the time of Federation in 1953 African politicians were stirring and becoming bolshie. ZANU and ZAPU were formed and, when the Federation broke up in 1963, they were banned and the more annoying leaders imprisoned. Britain was reluctant to get tough when Ian Smith declared UDI and pretended to impose sanctions and prayed the problem of the bolshie blacks would go away. Instead, ZANU and ZAPU opted for guerrilla war. This alarmed commercial interests in the USA and South Africa, who felt Smith was blowing it, and he was pressurised to release African leaders including Mugabe.
Smith tried manipulating the African leaders with various machinations intended to keep white rule in place. The whites would have a guaranteed twenty-eight seats in a legislature and a veto over all legislation for ten years. This was the Western-style democracy for Africans, intended to persuade Mugabe to stop being bolshie. The whites would also keep control of the Army, the Police, judiciary, Civil Service and anything else that mattered.
Mugabe was, not surprisingly, unimpressed and finally Smith was forced to call elections for both blacks and whites, while urging the Rhodesian Army to eliminate the guerrillas or terrorists or misguided patriots who could not see that the whites were doing all this in their best interest.
In 1979 the Commonwealth decided to try another tack, and a black majority government was reluctantly accepted. Mugabe was being allowed to rule his own nation. It was hoped he would be properly grateful and know his place, and stop being bolshie, i.e. patriotic. At first Mugabe was a good boy, but by the late 1980's his supporters were said to be helping themselves to national assets, which was exactly what the whites had been doing for a century.
In the 1990 elections, a democratic alternative party offered a choice to the voters, but Mugabe did some gerrymandering, emulating his white predecessors, and declared a landslide ZANU victory. To screams of rage from Mr. Blair and his Commonwealth chums, Mr. Mugabe has repeated the exercise in 2002.
It seems Mr. Mugabe truly does not believe in the Westminster model of democracy. In fact, he seems to think that British democracy is a game, a joke, a pretence to gull the voters. It is true that the establishment elite pretend to be divided and present alternative policies, but the outcome is the same whichever way the electors choose. The party elites got together in 1956 to replace the old style imperialism, which the US killed off at Suez, with a discreet, covert, secret form of imperialism.
Instead of imposing our stooges on Nigeria, we would fix the elections so it appeared that the millions of Africans, yearning for freedom, voted for politicians who actively opposed such independence and freedom! And they got away with it.
The Smiths were supposed to feel that this evil criminality was a jolly good wheeze and, indeed, huge bribes were offered for our compliance, acquiescence, or just keeping our mouths shut. When I appealed to 'Justice', believing it to be independent, honest and not just another Whitehall front organisation, a top Tory MP and barrister declared the Smiths totally correct, honest, sincere and public spirited, and then his colleague, a shadow Labour Lord Chancellor offered the deal - Massive bribes to join in the criminality.
This is the way Western 'democracy' really works. Most certainly in Britain the pretend 'democracy' is a conspiracy against the common people. Tony Blair does not give a damn about the best interests of the African people, about democracy, freedom, liberty or any of that stuff. He will buddy-buddy any military or fascist or non-democratic regime if they will play ball with British interests and not give the welfare of their own peoples any kind of priority.
If Mr. Mugabe plays along with Mr Blair's real agenda, he can emulate the Cecil Rhodes gang and suck Zimbabwe dry, and put his people back where the Brits had them. It is not my business to tell the African peoples how to conduct themselves. We have enough sleaze in the Blair administration. Is Blair proposing his nasty, pretend democracy as a role model for African peoples? Blair's implicit, deep-rooted racism makes his proposed Mission to Africa a huge and cruel joke.
Mr Mugabe should return the compliment and appoint a Truth Commission to Britain. Top of the agenda could be Mr. Blair's continuing cover-up of the Nigerian black holocaust, which killed three million innocent Africans. Harold Smith March 2002
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