THE PLANK APRIL 1, 2008
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The New York Times is reporting that Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean tyrant, may resign at the result of his clear loss in the presidential election over the weekend. Usually, dictators don't hold elections that they can't win, but apparently even this basic element of authoritarian governance was beyond Mugabe's grasp. Needless to say, this is hardly the outcome anyone expected.
After all, Mugabe is not one to put up with opposition. While the world hailed him as a liberation hero in the 1970's, he was making clear promises to rule Zimbabwe as a one-party state. Using North Korean trained troops, he immediately followed up on that pledge and killed some 20,000 minority Ndebeles in the 1980's to secure his rule. The last (and only time) he officially lost an election was in 2000, when he attempted to shove through a constitutional amendment that would have, among other measures, allowed the government to seize white-owned farm land without compensation. He lost at the polls, but proceeded to go about implementing his ruinous policy anyway, which has led to today's Weimar inflation and the largest refugee crisis in the world (worse than Iraq's). For the past eight years, his regime has harassed, tortured, murdered, or driven into exile countless opposition figures. So while it's tempting to hold out hope that reports of his imminent demise are true, there is very little about Zimbabwe's history or Mugabe's own behavior to suggest that he would ever retire without handpicking a successor, or that he would ever be forced out office without a fight.
Rumors abound that Mugabe has already fled the country (to Malaysia, his favorite vacation spot, and, perhaps now, site of asylum). It would be a grave injustice were Mugabe, as a condition of his stepping down, to enjoy the twilight of his life living in comfortable exile as Idi Amin did in Saudi Arabia. Regime change in Zimbabwe would also afford the opportunity of delivering justice to another mass murderer, Mengistu Haile Mariam, whom Mugabe has sheltered since the Marxist dictator fled Ethiopia in 1991. The "international community," if such a thing exists, stands for nothing if it misses out on this two-for-the-price-of-one opportunity.
--James Kirchick
6 comments
I'm happy to let the monster go if it means we can right the Zimbabwean ship. What an amazing thing if this is true.
- ralphnelle
April 1, 2008 at 12:38pm
Agreed, James. If the ICC does not do it job now and prosecute the damn tyrant as amply as he has deserved, its existence will have been revealed to be about as meaningless as the critics have always claimed.
- jkolic
April 1, 2008 at 12:52pm
How 'bout we change the name back to Rhodesia and return the country to British rule so it can be civilized again.
- ChanRobt
April 1, 2008 at 12:57pm
First off, props to Kirchick for a decent post. Too wordy, but substantively good.
I'd quibble with one thing: Yes, it would be a grave injustice for Mugabe to retire in comfort. But unjust comfort for one man doesn't even rate compared to the far graver injustice of his continued stay in power. The real world is not about the exquisite moral beauty of perfect justice, it's about practical outcomes. And if letting the bastard sip tea in a mansion for the rest of his days is the necessary price of removing him from his throne, then we should pay that price with a clear conscience.
Even after his escape from Elba and the Hundred Days, Bonaparte still received a comfortable exile, and the injustice of his peaceful death seems not to have done any lasting damage to the moral fabric of Western civilization. In the long run, the tyrant's head in the guillotine looks a lot less like justice than does the freedom and prosperity of his victims' grandchildren.
- rhubarbs
April 1, 2008 at 1:06pm
Ah yes, the high civilization of racial exclusion. Can we bring back Apartheid as well?
Seriously, though, Zimbabweans may have found that something was worse than living in Rhodesia -- living in Mugabe's ruined hulk of Zimbabwe. Unfortunately, I don't think you can even bring back the people whose farms were stolen by Mugabe. It is going to take them a long time to climb back out of this hole.
- JEFF FREY
April 1, 2008 at 3:08pm
Jeff Frey, whatever injustices there were in Africa under white rule-- and we know there were many-- since Europeans left, multiple genocides have been committed against blacks by other blacks.
The torture, maiming, and death visited upon blacks by blacks dwarfs anything Europeans did to black Africans either out of malice, ignorance, or negligence.
Black rule of Africa has been a disaster of immense proportions.
But, of course, this is not polite to utter.
- ChanRobt
April 1, 2008 at 4:05pm