Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe

Rating:
Summary: A Racist African State Exposed
Review: At last, a novel which exposes the evil, racist practices of Robert Mugabe's dictatorship. After all the lies and platitudes, those who emigrated in the early eighties have been proven wise. Meredith clearly has an excellent understanding of events in Zimbabwe and is not deceived by the leftist propaganda engine.Those who find themselves shocked by events in Zimbabwe should not be, the ZANU PF never embraced democracy as it is envisioned in the West.Populist majoritarian rule with no minority protection, was always the order of the day in the new Zimbabwe (as in the new South Africa).Readers should take a warning from this novel and compare the events depicted thein to what is currently happening in South Africa, Zimbabwe's sister state, a country where blantant racial engineering is being excercised at the expense of individual human rights.It is only a mater of time before history repeats itself.

Rating:
Summary: Response to Rubendall review
Review: This book has no credibility nor insight on the sufferings of the black Zimbabwean. This piece of literature encourages the servant-master relationship that has characterised Zimbabwe, ten years after independence. The author has delibarately neglected to mention the dominant role that the whites have played in Zimbabwe up to this point of intervention by Robert Mugabe. It is likely that the author himself is embittered by the compulsory land acquisition, because it is likely one of his farms or family members farms has been occupied by the black Zimbabwean people who for more than ten years after independence, are still landless, and dependant on the whites. Mugabe's endeavours to change the current injustices have resulted in his depiction as a tyrant, and a racist. The racists are those, such as the author who disregard Mugabe's efforts to bring about true independence and equality in Zimbabwe and all Africa. Mugabe is not a racist, nor tyrant, merely a great nationalist!

Rating:
Summary: A well told tragedy that still continues
Review: This book puts into context better than anything I have read the major tragedy that has been occurring in Zimbabwe for over twenty years. The parallels with the Congo (as covered in the excellent book "In the footsteps of Mr Kurtz" on Mobutu's kleptocracy in Zaire) are matched here by the story of how a wealthy and well developed colony after a crippling war of independence came under Mugabe's control.

The saddest aspect is while matters started very promisingly with the country ripe for a muti racial experiment and very similar to South Africa, the early use of force to remove tribal opposition was then applied unremmitingly to the white minority with fatal long term effects on the country's economy.

That inequality existed and changes were needed on land distribution were clear - the redistribution when it occurred was done in such a manner that not only were the whites permanently alienated but the corruption and lack of planning as to what was to replace has had fatal consequences with mass poverty, unrest and a wealthy autocratic elite destroying the future prospects for the poorer native populace of the country.

The control of every facet by Mugabe's Zanu Party whenever challenged has been met with violence from local opposition using North Korean trained cadres to outright intimidation of the judiciary, one of the real heroes in this story.

A very well told and researched history.



Rating:
Summary: Good descriptive work, but lacks critical analysis
Review: This book should be evaluated and judged for what it is: a fairly comprehensive piece of historical journalism. It does not pretend to be an in-depth and exhaustive scholarly analysis of post-colonial Zimbabwean society, and the reader should therefore not approach it as such. Meredith succeeds in tracing the developmental path of Mugabe's political career, and he provides the reader with an ample historical/contextual framework within which to interpret Mugabe both as a person and as a politician. The author is particularly adept at clearly illustrating the patronage-based structure of the Mugabe regime. However, at times, this over-emphasis on ethnic cronyism and state corruption becomes tedious and simplistic, as it is obviously impossible to relate all of Zimbabwe's contemporary problems to internal factors alone. The author gets his point across -- that Mugabe is a dictator and that his system of government was inherently corrupt from the start -- BUT Meredith fails to adequately address the fundamental socio-economic and political reasons that facilitate the rise to power of someone like Mugabe. However, given the journalistic flavor of this book, such analysis might simply have been beyond the author's current scope. It remains an interesting and worthwhile read though, and it does provide valuable insights to those who have never studied about, or visited, Zimbabwe.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent overall account
Review: This book tells an amazing tale of what really happend, without biased. Robert Mugabe is a dellusional monster who can not see past his own self and almost single handedly has driven Zimbabwe into the ground. This book has laid out the facts.

Rating:
Summary: Decline and Fall of Zimbabwe
Review: This is a super-readable book about the career of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, whose corruption, brutality, and paranoia have wrecked Zimbabwe's democratic institutions and have brought the country to the brink of economic ruin. The book is refreshingly free of cant, and the author has a sharp eye for political grotesqueries, which have abounded in post-independence Zimbabwe. My only complaint (and hence the rating of 4 stars) is the lack of footnotes or any real analysis of the social or economic currents underlying Zimbabwean politics. Instead, journalist Meredith is content to chronicle events newspaper-style.

Rating:
Summary: A moving portrayal of the lies of Mugabe
Review: When Mugabe and his band of guerrilla emerged from the jungle in 1980 and took the reigns of power in Zimbabwe(at that time RHodesia) the wordl breathed a sigh of relief. For a decade the white minority government of Ian Smith had been fighting a losing struggle against Mugabes Marxists. The Rhodesian government had 'declared independence' from England in order to continue the war which England had encouraged the government to negotiate a ceasefire and allow for a majority government.

We all thought that Zimbabwe would now have equal rights for all. This book details what happaned and the horror that Mugabes country has become. Mugabe promised land reform, what he meant was that he would take every inch of white land and reward it to his 'boys'. His followers grabbed the white land and then they did nothing with it and soon a country that had been exporting grain and food was on the brink of national starvation. Mugabe could have devided the land fairly and could have given it to the blacks who had farmed it for years under white rule but instead he gave it to his corrupt 'boys' and ruined the economy.

Next Mugabe became a dictator. He had fought against what he called white dictatorship but he then became a dictator himself, like all communists who promise freedom but only bring slavery to their nations, Mugabe quickly outlawed freedom of the press and civil rights and imprisoned those that spoke against him.

THis wonderful book written by a man who was born in Rhodesia tells the story of idealism gone awry. Her majestys government in England that had orginally called for a settlement now has snactions on Mugabe and opposes him at every turn because England knows the Mugabe is a viscous dictator worse then the white government he replaced. The people are Zimbabwe are starving. They were better off under Smith when at least they had some freedoms and food. Now the country is a disaster and this book is one of the few to expose the truth. A riveting tale, a must read for africa buffs. A balanced account that reveals the suffering of average africans.

Rating:
Summary: A moving portrayal of the lies of Mugabe
Review: When Mugabe and his band of guerrilla emerged from the jungle in 1980 and took the reigns of power in Zimbabwe(at that time RHodesia) the wordl breathed a sigh of relief. For a decade the white minority government of Ian Smith had been fighting a losing struggle against Mugabes Marxists. The Rhodesian government had 'declared independence' from England in order to continue the war which England had encouraged the government to negotiate a ceasefire and allow for a majority government.

We all thought that Zimbabwe would now have equal rights for all. This book details what happaned and the horror that Mugabes country has become. Mugabe promised land reform, what he meant was that he would take every inch of white land and reward it to his 'boys'. His followers grabbed the white land and then they did nothing with it and soon a country that had been exporting grain and food was on the brink of national starvation. Mugabe could have devided the land fairly and could have given it to the blacks who had farmed it for years under white rule but instead he gave it to his corrupt 'boys' and ruined the economy.

Next Mugabe became a dictator. He had fought against what he called white dictatorship but he then became a dictator himself, like all communists who promise freedom but only bring slavery to their nations, Mugabe quickly outlawed freedom of the press and civil rights and imprisoned those that spoke against him.

THis wonderful book written by a man who was born in Rhodesia tells the story of idealism gone awry. Her majestys government in England that had orginally called for a settlement now has snactions on Mugabe and opposes him at every turn because England knows the Mugabe is a viscous dictator worse then the white government he replaced. The people are Zimbabwe are starving. They were better off under Smith when at least they had some freedoms and food. Now the country is a disaster and this book is one of the few to expose the truth. A riveting tale, a must read for africa buffs. A balanced account that reveals the suffering of average africans.

Rating:
Summary: Decline and Fall of Zimbabwe
Review: ~Our Votes, Our Guns~ chronicles the tyrannical rule of Robert Mugabe, from his heyday as a revolutionary guerilla who was captured an imprisoned to a victorious leader in what was initially to be a coalition government in the 1970's with Ian Smith's Rhodesian white colonials, the various black factions, and Mugabe's ZANU party in unity. Recently he said he could be a "black Hitler ten-fold" in a political speech. By the early 1980's, Mugabe eschewed the idea of a coalition government, opting instead for total consolidation of rule by his party. Mugabe through Machiavellian manipulations managed to scapegoat the political opposition in the public eye. Thereafter, he justified purges ostensibly for the purposes of stifling his contrived threat of a coup d'etat. Mugabe's violence obviously only served to foment political opposition-both white and black-and browbeaten white farmers gradually dropped the conciliatory posturing as their farms were confiscated and family members were murdered. In his approach to counter-insurgency, Mugabe boldly proclaimed to his opposition, "We have to deal with this problem quite ruthlessly," with regards to resistance in Matebeland, so "Don't be surprised if your relatives get killed in the process..." Grim reports of Ian Smith's Rhodesian Apartheid regime knocking off guerillas pail in comparison to the horrors unleashed by Mugabe. Millions have been killed as a result of Mugabe's rule.

Robert Mugabe has secured his power base through a corrupt scheme of patronage to cronies while bribing armed cadres of murderous mobs to crush political opposition. Mugabe literally despises whites, but also shows his hatred for black minority opposition in his own nation. Espousing the familiar Afro-Marxist rhetoric of a demagogue dictator, he seemingly justifies any means requisite to purge his nation of the 'evil' vestiges of capitalism and colonialism. Mugabe rules with fanatical zeal and has morbid remarks in reference to his policies of forced famine and mass-murder, which are eerily reminiscent of Pol Pot. He offers no apologies for his cruel measures designed to solidify his rule. He has plundered the nation, stripped it of its productive capacity, and his made zealous efforts to confiscate and redistribute private farmland, which has utterly devastated the economy of Zimbabwe. He has reduced the productivity of a once largely self-sufficient agricultural nation to a destitute backwater republic. Besides utilization of political violence, Mugabe, much like the warlords of Somalia, holds onto power precariously by controlling the distribution of foreign aid and humanitarian relief through his spoils system of patronage. In doing so, he buys support from a loyal cadre of cohorts.

Recently, the fashionable thing amongst the media establishment and policymakers in the West-particularly Leftist cadres in the UK has been to tacitly support and praise Mugabe's efforts for land reform while conveniently ignoring the horrors of his regime perpetrated against both whites and blacks. The mass-media never does specials on ethnic cleansings in Zimbabwe. And unfortunately political correctness of leftist journalists in the West tends to extol leaders like Robert Mugabe (while ignoring his criminal track record as mass-murdering despot.) The one smug thing I really dislike about liberal journalist Martin Merideth is his initial enthusiasm for the good intentions of Mugabe when he first came to power... He acts as if socialism and anti-colonial wars of national liberation are all noble and admirable, but Mugabe simply came along and betrayed the principle. The communist bloc-the Soviets, Chinese, and North Koreans-launched anti-colonial propaganda campaign to fuel insurgent revolutions fusing nationalism with socialism in an effort to build a pro-communist, anti-Western bloc in the Third-World. Robert Mugabe and Nelson Mandela were among their minions. The red crown jewels in this endeavor included Ethiopia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Zaire. The pictures documenting his torture and mass-murder at various web sites are repugnant to the human eye and conscious. Yet those champions of human rights, the UN and IMF, continue to bolster his regime with aid. Meanwhile, in the Western media turn a blind eye to the atrocities when reporting anything on Zimbabwe and only gloss over the need for the West to help arbitrate Mugabe's land reform proposals. Land reform in Neo-Marxist newspeak means confiscation and redistribution of private property. Mugabe's legacy is one of criminal mass-murderer who destroyed his country's economy while murdering and starving 'his people.' He is a murderous thug whose judgment may never come from some tribunal, but will when he meets his maker.

Many outside observers naively approach southern African politics and international relations with the idea that fighting is between blacks and whites. They ignore abuses by black revolutionaries against their own blood kin, but why should it be any less acceptable when perpetrated against whites? Nelson Mandella, the media darling, was a violent communist terrorist, but doesn't get exposed by the Western media, but rather is heralded as a patron saint. There is a book by a black clergyman Sipo Mzimela tied to the ANC opposition, which documents the murderous ANC-perpetrated terrorism and corrupt assent of Mandella called Marching to Slavery, which may be found on a used book search since it is conveniently out-of-print. Despite exposing Mugabe, Martin Meredith cannot bring himself to trample the sacred cow of Mandella's fictious legacy as a humanitarian hero in his other book.