Why is Mugabe popular

From what I hear, the literacy rate in the cities are far higher than the rural towns - and the rural towns is where MadBob enjoys the most support. I just don't buy it that in today's modern world with cellphones and radios and internet that people with access to information can follow a despot so blindly (rural people, sure, but not those in the city)
 
BobbyMac, check this: http://www.zol.co.zw/index.php?link=corp

R1 = $33.84 ZWD (www.xe.com/ucc)

a 128kbit/s line with a 600MB cap costs $11,311,650 ZWD = R334,205.00

Now, I assume these prices hasn't been altered since the govt chopped three decimals off the currency, so R334 per month doesn't sound bad, but in Zim money that's a fortune. So I doubt if too many Zimbabweans can afford to keep up to date with what goes on in the world via internet.
 
koffiejunkie said:
BobbyMac, check this: http://www.zol.co.zw/index.php?link=corp

R1 = $33.84 ZWD (www.xe.com/ucc)

a 128kbit/s line with a 600MB cap costs $11,311,650 ZWD = R334,205.00

Now, I assume these prices hasn't been altered since the govt chopped three decimals off the currency, so R334 per month doesn't sound bad, but in Zim money that's a fortune. So I doubt if too many Zimbabweans can afford to keep up to date with what goes on in the world via internet.
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I think your numbers are wrong

Shouldn't it be R 334,205.00 for 600MB and not R 334 :confused:
 
Rooinek said:
Your assertion is inadequate, and you know it. Tassidar's statement alludes that there are more black people who are resentfull of whites than those who are willing to live peacefully with whites.

Proof please.
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Rooinek my statement in no way alludes to this. I was merely suggesting the reason why Mugabe is popular, not making any quantative judgement about how popular he is.

Secondly, you know as well as I do that this thread is not a fact based thread, because there is not the research that has been done, this means that the argument must be based more on logic, as no appeal to facts will work. The onus is therefore on you to propose a counter-theory as to why Mugabe is popular rather than asking for an appeal to facts.
 
Why is Mugabe popular ? Why is any MoB boss or pirate leader popular? Why is any Gigolo popular? Why is Mbeki or Zuma popular?
 
All for Sugar
Saturday 17th August 2007

Dear Family and Friends,
A month ago I received an email from one of the last few commercial sugar farmers still hanging on in Chiredzi. She described how in April a convoy had arrived at the farm and announced that the government were taking over their property and that the family had until September to wind up their business, give up their livelihood, get out of their home and off the land. The government delegation then proceeded to enter the family home and list all the things which were not to be removed as these were also being acquired by the State. These included fans and kitchen units and from the house the delegation moved out to the farm yard. Here they took details of tractors, machinery and farm implements and said these too were now the property of the State. The delegation said compensation for the listed items would be made "One Day" in the future at a price to be decided by State valuators when finances were available. The farming family are now, as I write, closing down their affairs and preparing to leave their home and property which grows sugar cane, citrus fruit and produces milk. In her email describing these last weeks, the farmer wrote that her children are well but very upset with these events and that they have so many questions about it all but there are not many answers.
This farming family are leaving to make way, not for a landless Zimbabwean peasant, but for the daughter of a high up political figure in the district.

This story of what is happening to one farm and one family in Chiredzi has been repeated hundreds of times over in the last eight years. The continuing seizure of farms in Zimbabwe by the State makes less sense now than ever before in our hungry land which has the lowest life expectancy and highest inflation in the world. The story of the seizure of this sugar farm is particularly poignant this week as tragic news has emerged of how three people died when a sugar queue in Bulawayo turned into a deadly stampede.

Just a fortnight ago I described being in a supermarket with my fifteen year old son and witnessing a stampede for cooking oil. The sight and sound of the rush, the pushing and shoving and the frantic snatching is still clear in my mind. These events are being repeated every day all over the country as there is virtually no food to buy in our shops as the government continues to insist on price controls. The deadly stampede happened in Bulawayo where many hundreds of people were queuing for sugar. A supermarket Security Guard opened the gates, people surged forward and then a wall collapsed. The Security Guard died instantly. Another man died later of head injuries and broken limbs. A 15 year old school boy was trampled in the stampede, his limbs were broken and he too died later in hospital.

As a farmer who suffered the indignity and outrage of the seizure of home, business and farm by the State in 2000 and who was also given the unfulfilled promise of compensation, I understand exactly the agonies of the sugar farming family in Chiredzi. As a mother of a 15 year school boy my heart goes out particularly to the family of the teenager trampled to death in a sugar queue in Bulawayo. Like my son, this teenager would have been just a year away from writing his 'O' Levels, about to embark on his life and perhaps go on to do great things for his country.

In a week so many lives and families have been broken - and all for sugar but all because of politics. Knowing this and then hearing of the standing ovation at the SADC summit in Lusaka makes the events on the ground at home all the more tragic. Do the SADC leaders know? Do they care?
Until next week, thanks for reading. Love cathy.
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http://www.cathybuckle.com/thisweek.shtml
 
Why is the international community not intervening in Zimbabwe? Obviously Mbeki doesn't care about people dying in that country (stampedes for food are outrageous!)
 
SADC support Mugabe, they agree with his policies.

Mbeki is the biggest hypocrite ever to walk the surface of the earth.

10 years ago everyone would've said you were mad if you predicted the current chaos and meltdown in Zim.
This action will eventually spill over the borders and be adopted by SADC states.
Only a matter of time.
 
Pitbull said:
I think your numbers are wrong

Shouldn't it be R 334,205.00 for 600MB and not R 334 :confused:
Click to expand...

Like I said, as far as I know the currency has been reprinted minus three zeroes (this is what I heard, I don't have anything to confirm), and I assume the pricelist hasn't been updated to reflect this.

Either ways, even R334 for any type of connection is rediculously expensive if you're earning zim dollars.
 
Tassidar said:
I don't really think Mugabe is popular in Zimbabwe anymore. Certainly among the Matabele, he isn't popular. They still harbour a great deal of resentment from the genocide. Mugabe wins elections by rigging poles and inspiring terror, and has done since he came to power (P. Stiff - Cry Zimbabwe).

Locally, I think Mugabe is popular exactly because of what he has done to white farmers. There is a large part of the population that is extremely resentful of whites in South Africa and would like for nothing better than to see them gone, even at the expense of prosperity (at least in theory, until it happens).

If you doubt this reasoning, I suggest you read Capetonians posts again.
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Actually, there is historical precedence with regard to this.

Nongqawuse (c. 1840s – 1898) was the Xhosa prophetess whose prophecies led to a millennialist movement that culminated in the Xhosa cattle-killing crisis of 1856–1857.

In April or May 1856, the teenaged Nongqawuse and her friend Nombanda went to fetch water from a pool near the mouth of the Gxarha River. When she returned, Nongqawuse told her uncle and guardian Mhlakaza, a Xhosa spiritualist, that she had met the spirits of three of her ancestors.

She claimed that the spirits had told her that the Xhosa people should destroy their crops and kill their cattle, the source of their wealth as well as food. In return, the spirits would sweep the British settlers into the sea; they would also replenish the granaries and fill the kraals with more beautiful and healthier cattle. At the time, many Xhosa herds were plagued with "lung sickness", possibly introduced by European cattle, and many cattle were dying already.

Mhlakaza repeated the prophecy to Paramount Chief Sarhili. Sarhili ordered his followers to obey the prophecy, causing the cattle-killing movement to spread to an unstoppable point. The cattle-killing frenzy affected not only the Gcaleka, Sarhili's clan, but the whole of the Xhosa nation, and it is estimated that the Gcaleka killed between 300,000 and 400,000 head of cattle.

Nongqawuse predicted that the ancestors' promise would be fulfilled on February 18, 1857, when the sun would turn red. On the day, however, the sun rose the same colour as every other day and the prophecy was not realised. Initially, Nongqawuse's followers blamed those who had not obeyed her instructions, but they later turned against her.

In the aftermath of the crisis, the population of British Kaffraria dropped from 105,000 to less than 27,000 due to the resulting famine; in at least one case, people were reportedly forced to resort to cannibalism. Nongqawuse was arrested by the British authorities and sent to Robben Island. After her release she lived on a farm in the Alexandria district of the eastern Cape, and died in 1898.

Both Chief Sarhili and Sir George Grey, governor of the Cape at the time, have been accused of engineering the crisis through Nongqawuse. Those who blame Sarhili claim he intended to manipulate the famine-struck into attacking the British settlers. Grey's accusers – most Xhosa people today – believe he used Nongqawuse to deliberately weaken the Xhosa people.

Historians in the present day have tended to look beyond individual actors and towards the structural influences that caused a desperate and penned-in set of people to embrace a millennialist movement, as many oppressed people have in many other past situations. In this case, historians have cited the devastating epidemic of lung-sickness and the increasingly successful expansion of white power; one historian, using an apparently Marxist analysis of the episode, focused on the frustration of ordinary Xhosa people with their chiefs who used cattle as their means of consolidating and maintaining political and economic power within Xhosa society, and who had failed to stem white expansion.

Today, the valley where Nongqawuse met the spirits is still called Intlambo kaNongqawuse (Xhosa for Valley of Nongqawuse).
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nongqawuse

Note, that whatever Grey's involvement (which I very much doubt), the Xhosa chose to starve themselves to drive the whites into the sea.

In other words they chose to suffer in order to get rid of the white man.

And I find this quite amazing:
And last month, a Xhosa royal council spokesman said a letter bearing his king's seal had been sent to the Prince of Wales asking for compensation for the "national suicide" of the Xhosa which occurred when they systematically slaughtered their cattle.

The Xhosa almost starved to death in 1856 when, following a vision by a 15-year-old girl prophet, they killed some 200,000 head of cattle and destroyed their crops in the belief that the sacrifice would drive the British colonisers into the sea
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/509169.stm

Let me get this straight: You ask for compensation from the people you attempt to commit genocide from? Right.
 
Tassidar said:
Actually, there is historical precedence with regard to this.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nongqawuse

Note, that whatever Grey's involvement (which I very much doubt), the Xhosa chose to starve themselves to drive the whites into the sea.

In other words they chose to suffer in order to get rid of the white man.

And I find this quite amazing:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/509169.stm

Let me get this straight: You ask for compensation from the people you attempt to commit genocide from? Right.
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I find it quite revealing. Clearly the people then (and now) thought differently, reasoned differently, had different concepts (such as ownership) and values (witchcraft etc).

When this happens, it isn't hard to see why conflicts occur.

We see this when we talk about "African logic", "African time" etc..
 
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