During her meetings last Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice assured him that his plan to bulldoze the homes of Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip was a necessary “historic” step towards the establishment of a Palestinian state and peace in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe could never even dream of such a meeting but he probably welcomed Dr. Rice’s endorsement of Sharon’s draconian means to these honorable ends. After all, Mugabe’s own plan of bulldozing homes in Shanty Towns all over his country has been in full graze for weeks. And, he claims the honorable ends of his plan are to cleanup Zimbabwe, establish law and order and impose respect for property rights amongst its teeming masses of extremely impoverished citizens.
Plan Mugabe: Political cleansing! Make rubbish of the homes of poor Zimbabweans and then announce a national campaign to clean it up!
Whereas no one has any reason to doubt Sharon’s honorable intentions or that the people affected by his plan will receive just compensation and resettlement costs (the US government will see to it); the same, unfortunately, cannot be said about Mugabe’s intentions or the fate of the poor Zimbabweans affected by his plan. Because, notwithstanding the similarities in their methods, Mugabe betrayed any honorable intent by the very name he chose for this ostensible national public works campaign: Operation Murambatsvina or “Drive out the rubbish”.
Furthermore, it is no coincidence that the homes targeted for bulldozing under Mugabe’s plan are those of about 1.5 million poor people who Mugabe and his ruling ZANU-PF party enforcers suspect of daring to participate in anti-government rallies last April before he was due to declare himself president for yet another term.
Ironically, the more he bulldozes them away, the greater a threat the poor and dispossessed become to Mugabe’s 25-year dictatorship. Because rendering so many Zimbabweans homeless and forcing them to flee for their lives (to the countryside and areas beyond) may finally compel his neighbor, Africa’s most powerful leader Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, to intervene: alas, not so much to fend for these wretched souls but rather to prevent them from spilling over the boarder and becoming his problem.
Evicted Zimbabwean children squatting amidst the rubble of their family’s bulldozed Shanty Town hut.
Therefore, the questions – concerning these politically cleansed Zimbabweans – that world leaders and the celebrity humanitarians who want to make poverty history must ask themselves are:
Where to now? And, how the hell will Live 8 concerts or the G8 Summitdebt relief provide relief for these flatlining statistics of African poverty?
News and Politics
Anonymous says
Boy talk about compassion fatigue. I’m feeling it. At some point we just have to say to these Africans, look if you don’t care about your own people don’t expect us to take care of them. And I agree all the rock concerts and money in the world won’t make a damn bit of difference!