Zimbabwe awaits news on Mugabe's future
Zimbabweans are waiting to see what steps the military will take next after seizing control of the country. President Robert Mugabe is said to be under house arrest but the whereabouts of his wife Grace, who was bidding to succeed him as president, are unknown.
South African ministers have been in the capital Harare meeting the army and political parties. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional bloc will hold emergency talks on Thursday.
President Mugabe, 93, has been in control of Zimbabwe since it gained independence from Britain in 1980. But the power struggle over who might succeed him, between Mrs Mugabe and her rival former vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa, has split the ruling Zanu-PF party in recent months.
More about Zimbabwe and former President Robert Mugabe.
Here is your emoji: 🇿🇼. Use it well.
CNN: Zimbabwe: Talks underway to form transitional government, source says
NYT editorial: For Zimbabwe, a Coup Isn't the Answer
Extras from BBC: Zimbabwe: Did Robert Mugabe finally go too far? - BBC News
Zimbabwe latest: How can you tell if a coup is happening?
Update: 'Mugabe Must Go': Thousands in Zimbabwe Rally Against Leader
Zimbabwe: Zanu-PF leaders meeting to decide Mugabe future
Pressure weighs on Mugabe to quit after mass protests
Update 2: Zanu-PF has removed Mugabe as party leader, and he may be impeached if he does not resign the Presidency by Monday.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SanityCheck on Sunday November 19 2017, @03:03PM (6 children)
Couldn't have happened to a nicer Communist. Fuck that guy, fuck Africa.
(Score: 2, Informative) by takyon on Sunday November 19 2017, @03:16PM (4 children)
Huh? Do you need your namesake? You're going to have to learn to live with your soon-to-be 4 billion neighbors [npr.org].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @05:36PM (1 child)
Africa will never reach 4 billion. There's no food for them.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @08:43PM
Actually, in Eritrea, they turn saltwater and desert into food.
Turning Saltwater and Desert into a Sustainable Ecosystem [dankalia.com]
The Manzanar Project in Eritrea, Sudan, China, and Chile [wikipedia.org]
Kenya Produces Lots of Food Without USA's Agrobusiness "Experts" [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [truth-out.org]
You need better sources of "information".
I suggest switching off Lamestream Media for starters.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @07:10PM
Africa has people who damage the environment. They are actually quite awful, despite lower resource use, because they do stuff like cut into oil pipelines in the Nigerian delta to steal oil and because they aren't too careful about disposal of things. Look up the "flying toilet" popular in Kenya and be horrified; wikipedia has pictures.
It gets worse if Africa gets more people. It gets worse if those people gain wealth (higher resource usage) or, much worse, move to a place like Europe where they can easily use lots of resources. Africans driving in Sweden use more resources than Africans walking in Ghana.
So, if we are serious about the environment, we need to keep Africans down. We need them dying of preventable disease, collapsing in the wilderness and being eaten by jackals. We need them choosing birth control, abortion, civil war, regular war, genocide, suicide, and euthanasia. We need to encourage this, one way or another. It's the only way to save the planet.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday November 19 2017, @08:09PM
>learn to live with
No. No we will not have to do this.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday November 19 2017, @09:41PM
Indeed. Perhaps one should note that he is, or was, of the "Chinese communist" persuasion, as in they are the once that supported him during the long insurgency in Rhodesia (that eventually turned into Zimbabwe, and Zambia ) while the other rebels was supported by the Russian communists, if such things matter and they probably do. So one would assume his will be sent into exile in China or probably stored away in some other hole where, super rich, former dictators go once they are overthrown and doesn't get a bullet in the back of the head.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 19 2017, @03:09PM (15 children)
Reading the linked articles, as well as some of the comments under the articles - the "consensus" seems to be, "Things can't get any worse than they already were under Mugabe." Such statements are made by people with little imagination. Yes, things CAN get worse. They can even get MUCH WORSE. As bad as Mugabe has been, he stands in the shadows of such genocial maniacs as Pol Pot. He isn't even in the same class as the minor league Idi Amin a Dada. Yes, things can get worse.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday November 19 2017, @03:22PM (13 children)
This one's for you: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/17/opinion/mugabe-zimbabwe-leftist-heroes.html [nytimes.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 19 2017, @04:11PM (12 children)
The NYT "credits" Mugabe with a trifling 20,000 dead. The Guardian "credits" Idi Amin with half a million - https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/aug/18/guardianobituaries [theguardian.com]
I don't suppose that we need do a search on Pol Pot to recognize that Mugabe and Amin were minor wannabe killers. Then, we have Stalin, Mao, and Hitler in the real major leagues.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @04:25PM (1 child)
...20000 is barely a pinch compared to bush, obama, trump
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @04:33PM
No worries, Mate! The Americans kill brown people, almost exclusively. Few blacks were harmed in the invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Fuckistan.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @06:28PM
The USA has 20 times the population, but even so a developed world democracy should be doing much better than that right?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Whoever on Sunday November 19 2017, @06:29PM (8 children)
That 20,000 doesn't include all the people who starved to death because of the way he ruled the country.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @06:41PM (5 children)
The mess in Iraq is because the USA lied and "regime changed" Iraq (Saddam was the USA's dog, he actually asked the US ambassador about Kuwait and the ambassador screwed up, so Saddam bit Kuwait and the USA put him down later based on lies about their ex-pet dog).
The mess in Libya is because the USA "successfully" regime changed it and replaced Gaddafi with muslim extremists.
The mess in Syria is because the USA financed the Syrian opposition and then supplied arms to the rebellion.
The USA isn't making things better in Yemen either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @09:27PM (1 child)
What's with this whataboutism? Can we just agree that all these governments are awful, to varying degrees?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @07:57AM
Not so if Trump decides to start Global Thermonuclear War because he happened to go full retard that day.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 20 2017, @01:53AM (2 children)
Unless of course, it's not. How are you making this apples to apples comparison between a country of 340 million and one of 16 million?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @04:32AM (1 child)
Mugabe destroyed Zimbabwe but he didn't destroy as many OTHER countries as the USA did.
Even when you divide by 20 the USA's wrongful kills count is higher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change#Cold_War_era [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_of_the_United_States#Covert_actions [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 20 2017, @03:08PM
We'll need to include Zimbabwe's interference [wikipedia.org] in the Second Congo War, particularly in providing the dominant air force in the war to the eventual victor, Joseph Kabila [wikipedia.org]. That war is thought to have killed 3 to almost 6 million people through mostly disease and starvation. With that multiplier of 20, things don't look so good for Zimbabwe anymore.
I await your next round of whataboutism.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 19 2017, @06:42PM (1 child)
That's interesting. Wonder how many other dictators death counts include the numbers of people who starved, or otherwise died due to a failed economy. North Korea, for instance. We read and hear stories of peasants starving throughout the winter - but no one offers numbers. I mean, no numbers at all, nevermind credible numbers. Stalin, on the other hand, has a fairly credible inventory of deaths due to his failed policies. Pol Pot's numbers are largely due to starvation, denial of health services, and the destruction of infrastructure. Hitler's numbers, on the other hand, are almost all directly due to violence and persecution.
Food for thought.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @07:23PM
Today you can still visit the killing tree. There are guided tours.
The killing tree is now a pretty think tree. The trunk is perhaps a meter thick. All around the tree, in a macabre forest, human bones stick up out of the soil.
The tree was used to kill babies. Numerous babies were swung by their feet, causing their heads to be cracked against the trunk of the tree.
That isn't just starvation. It makes gas chambers look civilized and gentle. Imagine being the guard. Imagine being a parent forced to watch.
People would also be slow-roasted while dangling over a smoldering fire.
Much of this, though not the tree, is in the movie The Killing Fields. It's a great movie, very true to what happened yet still a well-done movie with a great story. The story (photographer trapped, tortured, escaped) is real. The lead actor was actually a survivor with a similar experience, and he re-starved himself to look right for the role.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @10:50PM
"Yes, things can get worse."
I was thinking the same thing, basically. What are the jews planning for Zimbabwe now that they have effectively deposed Mugabe. Will Zimbabwe be bombed to oblivion, a military pet dictator be put in place, continuous civil war, ... The possibilities are endless.
And yes, Mugabe's rule may have caused some deaths, but nothing compared to genocidal maniacs like Churchill, Stalin, Pol Pot, Roosevelt, Truman, Bush, Obama, and now Trump. Americans have a history of genocide and they brag about it.
(Score: 1) by takyon on Sunday November 19 2017, @03:23PM
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Entropy on Sunday November 19 2017, @03:47PM (3 children)
This is the guy that slaughtered farmers and stole their land based on race. He's a genocidal maniac which will hopefully be executed.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by inertnet on Sunday November 19 2017, @04:26PM (2 children)
He's the black Hitler. Not only against whites, but he also had 20000 of the Ndebele people killed (during the revolution, Nkomo fought alongside Mugabe but he had to give up after his people were slaughtered by Mugabe): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Nkomo#Conflict_with_Mugabe [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by mendax on Sunday November 19 2017, @07:26PM
If you look carefully, he even has the toothbrush mustache.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @10:56PM
Hitler was loved by his people and they died for him. Mugabe is not loved by his people and they will not die for him. Big difference. Every time you compare Hitler to dictators, warlords and murderers, you lose respect.
A question for you, since you know so much about Hitler: How do you know what Hitler did? (did you hear about it in a movie?)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Sunday November 19 2017, @04:43PM (21 children)
I have always been a strong proponent of multi-ethnic democracy. I take it as an article of faith that more viewpoints makes for a stronger labratory of ideas.
Zimbabwe, however, is a very stark counter example. That country was vastly better off as Rhodesia under white rule. What happened after the Zanu-PF took over is exactly what Ian Smith warned would happen. Rhodesia went from being the bread basket of southern Africa to a basket case.
I am still working out what that means. At the moment i'm thinking race doesn't matter, but culture does. Culture in the very broad sense of "how things are done." A country can be a strong, multi-ethnic enterprise, as long as the superstructure of the rules remains sound. If that superstructure is compromised, any rich, powerful country can quickly lose everything. And a country whose superstructure is a priori compromised by a sub-optimal culture (acceptance of corruption, etc) will defeat any natural riches or human capital that might make it rich.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday November 19 2017, @04:47PM (5 children)
*Anonymous Coward comes along and urges you to take the red pill*
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @05:10PM (4 children)
Undoubtedly that is exactly what some readers were thinking, I bet quite a few chortles went into some coffee mugs seeing Phoenix666 talk about failed cultural mixing.
The US is a great example of how culture mixing can work pretty well. There are millions of muslims, jews, christians, buddhists, and even more esoteric religions / cultures living together mostly fine. I credit our strong governments (fed/state/local) that are able to enforce our relatively decent laws that support freedom. Yes there are massive problems, but I'm talking about the day to day stuff for average citizens. If some muslims want to enforce sharia law in the US they are going to get a pretty good dose of cultural intolerance and in some cases will get a good dose of our worst system: prison.
We don't have to like each other, but we are not allowed to let that extend into violence or persecution.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @10:34PM
When your country USA collapses financially you will see civil war.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @05:04AM
The muslims are not mixing. They still control their own, keeping them in the fold.
They don't get far with sharia... yet. There is now talk about doing official sharia for some parts of France, which is a quarter muslim. Perhaps it won't happen until France is a third muslim. Ultimately, it will happen.
In the history of the world, how many places can you find that have escaped islam? I can only think of southern Spain and most of Israel. Lebanon was Christian, Afghanistan was Buddhist... and the cancer grows to conquer the whole earth.
Muslim population in the USA is rapidly growing. Once it reaches a certain level, it will demand and get a special status. Once it solidly dominates, the genocide of non-muslims begins.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday November 20 2017, @01:48PM (1 child)
Indubitably. But as those chortles issue from the reflexively racist, they don't bother me much.
And that is the cultural mixing that has been my baseline. America has done a great job incorporating influences from every part of the globe, and that makes the country stronger. That's as long as the superstructure of mores has remained intact. But that superstructure is nearly done in, now. Most of the damage has been from the inside. The powerful and connected have made a mockery of the rule of law. The average citizen has been complacent and allowed those trends to continue. So America has lost its sense of self, and strange, marginal causes and systems have been able to seize center stage in the national discourse.
If we don't have a conservative revolution ("conservative" in the political science sense of restoring what was before), the rich, powerful country America has been will quickly lose everything and the world will be much the poorer for it--imagine a world dominated by China, and shudder.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @05:01PM
You're confusing conservative with reactionary.
They aren't incompatible, so it's an easy mistake to make.
Reactionary: seeking the status quo ante, trying to restore what came before.
Conservative: changing things by slow, incremental changes.
Conservative contrasts with radical. It's quite possible to have a radical reactionary.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by inertnet on Sunday November 19 2017, @05:03PM (2 children)
Well, maybe some guy who has led a very bloody revolution in the past may not be the best choice to lead a country.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @05:11PM
Some revolutions are just bloody. The issue isn't just Mugabe, it's the people that supported his junta all the way and the voters of that country that only cared about what they were given and not how it was being come by.
Stealing from the rich is a lot easier than taxing the rich to pay for the things necessary to build a strong economy where everybody has what they need to thrive.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @06:45PM
That's why most violent revolutions end up as dictatorships. And that's why Marx and Engels were idiots/evil.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @05:09PM (5 children)
The issue here is that the government was being run by a populist that didn't care at all about the consequences of his policies. You see something similar in Venezuela where Chavez burned that country to the ground appealing to people who had nothing by taking away things from the rich without any sort of restraint on his part.
That's not to say that there shouldn't have been any redistribution in those cases, but it has to be done with some degree of restraint and with a plan in mind. You can't take productive farmland away from farmers and give it to people who just use it for housing and expect that there won't be massive consequences in terms of access to food and economic activity. Likewise, you can't nationalize all the businesses and expect that there's going to be foreign investment or any meaningful effort put into running businesses.
The multi-ethnic part of this has more to do with the specific gasoline being used.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @06:03PM (4 children)
In the US the will of the people has been clear for a long time now. Fix election funding and tax the rich. This simple plan would fix a LOT of our problems and allow capitalists to continue doing their thing, but the greedy fuckers bribe and propagandize their way into stealing more and more. I am actually getting a bit nervous that people will actually start trying out violent solutions and I'm not excited about living in that future.
Please please PLEASE AI bot / NSA sucker let your masters know that shit is getting out of hand. Might want to lead off with some short blurb about how clamping down on the populace will only delay and make worse the inevitable.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 20 2017, @02:08AM (2 children)
So what? Even if we ignore that these "people" have an extraordinary difficulty in voting for people who would do the above (which strongly undermines the claim), we need to recall that we have laws. Past attempts at this fixing have been pretty clueless about that. If you repeatedly break laws in order to get what you think you want (for example, the McCain-Feingold [wikipedia.org] campaign finance law that has been mostly repeated by the Supreme Court), then it's likely that what you'll have at the end is worse than what you started with. Rule of law is more important than minor issues with election funding and envious tax the rich mentality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @08:28AM (1 child)
Laws are to serve people, people aren't to serve the laws.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 21 2017, @06:55PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @05:07PM
Fix election funding ... right, because Trump bought his way into the White House, waving all those moneydollar benjamins around to hypnotise the rubes, where poor Hillary's broke campaign could hardly afford a coffee break.
... wait, what's that?
OK, hold everything guys, this just in: Hillary outspent Trump pretty much two-for-one. Holy shit, maybe election funding doesn't explain how we got what we got?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @07:35PM
Culture and genetics are in a feedback loop. Evolution can be weird.
Given a fictional static culture, it should be clear that some people will produce more descendants than others will. This isn't completely random. There are thus some traits that, if inherited, lead to more of the same. These traits spread through the population, so the gene pool isn't static.
Given a fictional static gene pool, it should be clear that culture will change with time. Styles change. Popular ideas spread, so the culture isn't static.
Oh dear. Neither culture nor the gene pool is static, and each influences the other. They're going to change and be changed by each other. We will fail to distinguish them when we compare different groups of people, since one can't change without changing the other.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Sunday November 19 2017, @08:13PM
" I take it as an article of faith that more viewpoints makes for a stronger labratory of ideas."
Less faith and more fact-based evaluation of the world around you, please.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Monday November 20 2017, @04:09AM (2 children)
A scenario being replayed in South Africa even as we speak.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by pr on Monday November 20 2017, @06:29AM (1 child)
Interesting comment. There are many similarities between the two countries, and as someone with family from SA, I hope there are sufficient differences for this not to happen there.
PR
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Monday November 20 2017, @06:42AM
I'm in touch with people in SA and have been following the mess about as closely as one can from the U.S. One can hope, but it doesn't look good. :(
https://nationunderassault.weebly.com/ [weebly.com]
This might interest you:
https://nationunderassault.weebly.com/campaign.html [weebly.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Monday November 20 2017, @08:40AM
Zimbabwe is an example of what happens when a foreign culture rules a nation until it finally gets deposed for good after a long guerrila war. The leader(s) who emerge after such conflict invariably are used to getting things their way by brutal coercion.
(Score: 0, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday November 19 2017, @06:01PM (2 children)
Thoughts and prayers with President Robert Mugabe, First Lady Grace Mugabe, and their loyal supporters in ZANU-PF. Who have been detained by their own military. While their own party turned its back on them. Turned its back on them after their many, many years of service. We are praying for you, and we are here for you. And we ask God to help see you through this very DARK period. 🙏✝
(Score: 1) by pr on Monday November 20 2017, @06:22AM (1 child)
Not sure why parent would be modded troll, it is realDonaldTrump after all... At least he's trying to bring his humour to Soylent. It's a pretty decent parody of a Trump tweet. Didn't make me lol but still made the corners of my lips twitch!
Could anyone really take it as a troll?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Reziac on Monday November 20 2017, @06:44AM
Well, when someone is trying to achieve success as a troll, and making such a sincere effort -- it would be cruel to mod him any other way. ;)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @06:57PM (1 child)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/the-latest-zimbabwe-lawmakers-definitely-seek-impeachment/2017/11/19/26d4d7fa-ccf9-11e7-b506-8a10ed11ecf5_story.html [washingtonpost.com]
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday November 19 2017, @09:06PM
He's not resigning. His enemies want him to resign. He's not. If he resigns I will be very disappointed and surprised. #MugabeStrong [twitter.com] 🇿🇼
(Score: 3, Informative) by Hartree on Sunday November 19 2017, @07:32PM (1 child)
Mugabe just gave a speech in which he was expected to resign. He didn't. He said he would preside over the ZANU-PF congress in December.
We'll see what the response is to this.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday November 22 2017, @04:52AM
Maybe it's Fake News, maybe it's a hoax, but they're saying he's resigned now. They say he wrote a letter, that he resigned in a letter. If you think about it, something's not right there. He gives a speech, he says he's not resigning. They threaten to impeach him, he says he's staying. He says he's still their president. Obviously, he doesn't want to resign, right? Then this letter comes out and they say he resigned with the letter? It stinks. They put a lot of pressure on him and he didn't resign. Then finally he resigned, or they faked a letter. I think it's terrible. Here he was, the democratically elected president. Who won in a landslide. And maybe the election was rigged, but he won. So he accepted it. Who wouldn't? You don't ask why you won, you accept the result.
And four years later, some military guys come and arrest him, arrest his wife, arrest his loyal supporters. And tell him he can't be president any more. It's disgraceful. It's a terrible thing for Zimbabwe, for the people of Zimbabwe. And we should all be worried. Because it's a very bad example. It puts a bad example out there.