Flying Pink Unicorns

Cholera in Zimbabwe

Hundreds of people have died in the recent (entirely preventable) outbreak of cholera in Zimbabwe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Zimbabwean_cholera_outbreak

Cholera is spread by a bacteria through eating contaminated food or water. Due to the unstable political situation, Zimbabwe's previously tolerable (for a poor country) supply of safe water has gone downhill. The outbreak has now spread to towns in Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia. Proving yet again that a badly unstable neighbor on your doorstep is just not a hot idea.

The Zimbabwe government has taken turns denying the outbreak and blaming it on a "calculated, racist, terrorist attack on Zimbabwe by the unrepentant former colonial power (the UK), which has enlisted support from its American and Western allies so that they can invade the country."

Yeah, that's it. Gordon Brown, PM Britain, has infected the Zimbabwe water supply with Cholera to make it easier for the UK to invade and re-subjugate the people of Zimbabwe. This is typical of the government there. Absolutely typical.

Mugabe has to rank as one of the most disappointing leaders in the last 50 years. He spent 11 years in prison for advocating for a free Zimbabwe as a colony it was known as Rhodesia and had white minority rule similar in very broad outline to the apartheid government in South Africa. After his release from prison he joined a rebel movement which ended in universal suffrage, and left him a hero in the eyes of many, and not just locally.

He took power in 1980. For many years he was widely regarded around the world as a fine leader by African standards. Infant mortality and young child mortality plummeted, immunization increased radically, child malnutrition fell, literacy boomed, the economy soared, education improved. In short, he appeared to be doing many of the right things for precisely the right reasons. There were certainly blips in this good story. He was intolerant of dissent and would kill to enforce that. He is violently anti-homosexual, and has used the courts to enforce that from time to time. Still, taking his record as a whole he was one of the best, if not the best of the revolutionary leaders. (I think of Mandela as a prisoner of conscience, not a revolutionary leader).

Then, starting in the mid 1990s, Mugabe moved, step-by-step, into the monster he is today. I remember I met an African woman, Nigerian I believe, at a law conference in the late 1990s. At a break I got talking to her and the topic turned to Mugabe. I was railing against his latest outrages (nothing compared to what was coming in this decade) and I remember she ended the conversation by walking away from me saying in an exasperated and angry voice, "Mugabe's not a monster." Well, she was basically correct when she said it, but in time I got much the better of the argument.

In recent years he has resorted to mass violence and mass use of food as a weapon, to maintain his iron grip on the country. As a result, Zimbabwe, once a clear post-colonial success, has gone to hell in a handbasket. It has suffered a mass inflation, gigantic food shortages, many thousands of arrests and government sponsored murders, and many other markers of a badly failed state. Mugabe apparently lost his bid for reelection, but ignored the results and imprisoned, on and off, the leaders of the opposition. He is now in the process (unsurprisingly) of shredding a power sharing agreement.

What a bitter disappointment from a man who obviously once cared deeply about the people of his country. Maybe in the fullness of time we'll learn that he has Syphilis, which has been rumored for years. That certainly wouldn't excuse any of his military and other supporters and sycophants.

What a parting gift to the world it would be for Bush to take him out before he turns over power. Mugabe IS a monster, and needs to be killed. He's in his 80s, but probably has 10 years left in him to misrule Zimbabwe and infect it and its neighbors. He must go.