Who Is Fooling Who? (July 22, 2002)

How can Mugabe fool the world? Or is everyone playing along systematically or ignorantly in Mugabe’s war crimes and politically motivated atrocities?

Here I talk of some African leaders who seem to be so much in a trail of silent collaboration of helping Mugabe’s Administration inflict human rights abuses upon the country’s masses. It is common in Africa that any failure on good governance is now blamed on innocent white dwellers who are earning an honest living and in the process assisting in drawing foreign currency to our troubled economies. I agree, land must be shared equally amongst all citizens of a nation, but that does not at all mean negotiations to this effect have to lead to a baseless blood bath. Whites in Zimbabwe have agreed to share their unfairly acquired land, but only on condition that it is distributed in a just and democratic process to the intended landless beneficiaries who do not necessarily have to be cronies or allies of the Mugabe regime. Why do we allow ourselves to be blindfolded into a trail of racist rule by these corrupt governments and Administrations?

Today the Mugabe regime is murdering, torturing, raping, marginalizing and depriving Zimbabwean citizens who oppose its system of governance, and we are fooled to believe that colonial imperialists have triggered it all. Why then do we continue to be victimized and oppressed with the same laws and acts that were imposed on our land by these same colonialist whites that Mugabe’s regime seems to be in so much dispute with. If Mugabe is indeed anti-colonial and anti-imperialistic, why then does he visit laws of the colonial era whenever he feels like stamping another foot on his already dying victims? Is this not classic neo-colonial hypocrisy? Before the likes of the Mugabe regime came to power in Africa, African peoples on the continent had societies which for centuries had allowed open debate and the right to a descending voice under African royal leaders who had court jesters; the likes of the Mugabe regime are quick to criminalize the time honored African tradition and culture of court jesters.

Its time for the world to wake up. Mugabe and his allies are fooling us. They are just a bunch of rich racist black imperialist who feed on the illiteracy and ignorance of individuals. Time was when the world community and the people of Zimbabwe isolated and condemned Administrations (in the then Rhodesia, and later Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, when Ian Smith and Bishop Muzorewa were in power) simply because such Administrations were illegitimate.

Robert Gabriel Mugabe (gross Human Rights abuser), ‘leader’ of a country

By: Thabo Siziba.

N.B: The article was also published in the Zimbabwean newspaper, The Sunday Mirror, on July 30, 2002. Title of the article was “Who is fooling who?”