YES WE CAN

The Fall of the House of Mugabe And the prevailing myth.

“ That “good leader gone bad” narrative is often used by Western leaders who helped push Mugabe into power, and it is popularly disseminated in the press. President Jimmy Carter still refuses to acknowledge that he blundered by forcefully supporting Mugabe. ”

“ Mugabe’s tenure during that first decade was almost flawless. Though a keen student of Maoist economic and revolutionary philosophies, he sagely kept government out of the new Zimbabwe’s three most profitable industries: massive, modern commercial farms which produced enough foodstuffs to feed roughly half of Africa, rich deposits of gold, chrome, copper, and other bulging veins of mineral wealth, and a tourism industry that included yawing game reserves and the thundering Victoria Falls. Mugabe retained experienced Europeans to run his military, banks, and courts, and was able to open the fledgling nation to an army of eager foreign investors. With foreign capital pouring in, he used that wealth to invest in Zimbabwe’s future. He built schools and hospitals, while aggressively pumping money into the national infrastructure. When the British-mandated Lancaster House Agreement between the Rhodesian government and Mugabe’s nationalist faction ended in 1987, Zimbabwe looked more like Europe than Africa.   Downfall It is argued that Zimbabwe’s disintegration came as a result of the first real challenge to Mugabe’s political authority in 1999, when the newly formed Movement for Democratic Change ran a successful, disciplined campaign against his 20 year incumbent party, ZANU-PF. When elections came in 2000, the MDC gained nearly 50 percent of Zimbabwe’s parliamentary seats, despite widespread accounts of vote-rigging and voter intimidation by the government. Mugabe reacted violently to what he saw as an unforgivable betrayal. Read more ” How stuff happens, wot?