Dear Editor,
Baldeo Persaud in SN of May 5 regurgitated the very biased view of the Western establishment, particularly the British, about President Robert Mugabe. In baldly stating “Leaders like Mugabe are responsible for the present state of Africa,” he completely dismisses Zimbabwe’s horrendous colonial legacy. He did not ask why the Western media simply parroted the alarmist and irresponsible statements by the MDC without ever giving the opportunity to Zanu-PF to explain its actions.
Nor did he ask why the West was so concerned about democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe when concurrently the same West and its allies were perpetrating atrocities in other parts of the world
Nobody knows enough of current events in Zimbabwe either to pile all the blame on Mugabe or to exonerate him completely. But the past has an iron grip on the present, and it should not be ignored. Mugabe’s land reforms, which have been at the root of British pique, simply mirror the thefts which first enabled the whites to control so much of Zimbabwe’s economy. In the 1890s, Cecil Rhodes and the settlers he led first cheated and then forcibly dispossessed the Shona and the Ndebele people. The whites stole their land, their cattle and, through taxation, their labour. When they resisted, they were cruelly suppressed and their leaders were hanged. From 1930, blacks were forbidden to own land outside the barren and crowded reserves. Until 2001, 74% of the most fertile land in Zimbabwe was owned by 4,000 whites.
Through the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement, which oversaw the transition to majority rule in Zimbabwe, the British recognized this injustice and promised to compensate the white farmers for land redistribution to their rightful owners. Thus, Mugabe, the architect of Zimbabwe’s liberation from Ian Smith’s white supremacist rule, had brought Zimbabwe to a position where the blackman had a vote for the first time and where his grievances were to be addressed. However, these iniquities were never satisfactorily addressed and in 1997 Mr Blair completely reneged on the pledges given in 1979, leaving the land reform programme in the lurch. What was Mugabe supposed to do?
So, Mr Persaud, only “Leaders like Mugabe are responsible for the present state of Africa?” In addition, Mugabe is too friendly with China and is an obstacle to Western schemes for the privatization of public services.