h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just wondering what the general feelings are about this.

A swift right hook ought to finish him off.

Yes Christopher I am quite sure you are right - a left hook would be 'too close to home!'. But there is a moral issue here too. I would like to applaud Brown for making a stand and I just wish the world you use his example

Hi viv, welcome to hootoo.

I've an aunt & uncle who live in Harare and refuse to leave. My mum came from there. I went back in 2001 to see them again and what the place had become. If it was up to me, I'd slit the guy's throat.

Hi Christopher,
I too come from Harare, my husband was a senior academic there and we left for family reasons about 4 years ago. Our son is still a doctor there and his wife teaches. That being so I feel that poor old Zim has been a little forgotten.
If the world could have a little 'real'insight into the problem I cannot but feel that their attitude would be quite different. There are such a lot of amazing people still there and they need our support.

>But there is a moral issue here too. I would like to applaud Brown for making a stand and I just wish the world you use his example


Pretty much my position. Mugabe has ruined his country and uses violence against any opposition. He has, to all extents and purposes, become a dictator since there doesn't seem to be any independent level of the state that can oppose him. The opposition are continuing to participate in elections but it looks unlikely that he'll permit any legal attempts to depose him (a la Milosevic).

I'm not really sure what's going to happen. Like Saddam, he's ruined the country so much that if there were any serious internal movement with the power to remove him they would surely be well on their way to doing so by now. Sanctions that hurt the regime, money to assist the opposition and (most importantly) building an anti-Mugabe alliance amongst the African democracies (which will prevent him playing the race card) seem like the best bets to me so far.

>If the world could have a little 'real'insight into the problem I cannot but feel that their attitude would be quite different. There are such a lot of amazing people still there and they need our support.

The British government and media have been particularly good at highlighting the situation in Zimbabwe. Tony Blair and now Gordon Brown have been keen to keep the situation in the public eye internationally and Morgan Tsvangirai (who, I'm glad to say, seems a reasonable sort) is probably one of the best-known foreign opposition leaders over here.

I'm still hopeful that the MDC will grow in popularity until they're in a position to overthrow the ZANU-PF regime peacefully. Appartently, the MDC is split over whether to continue contesting elections since much of the leadership considers them so rigged as for them to be useless and that contesting them at all is somehow playing into Mugabe's hands by giving the impression that the country remains democratic.

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

Hi Zagreb,
I think that to hope for a political solution is VERY hopeful. Someone told 'Bob' about the Romans and their Divide and Rule tactic and it seems to work for him just as well as it did for them.
Speaking as someone who happily queued for 11 hours to vote in the last Zimbabwe elections which had any meaning, it is virtually impossible to hope that 'the neo-Romans' will not be ahead of the game. We live in hope and keep our 'widow's weeds' dusted just in case. - fingers x'd.

Hi Zagreb - again,
Just to say that the 'politburo' members all know where all the skeletons are and where all the cupboards are and it is that which acts as the brickolage in the machinery.

Well, one's a political control freak riding roughshod over civil liberties, mired in sleaze, corruption and controversy whilst being despised by a large portion of the electorate - the other's the President of Zimbabwe.

Or, one's a political control freak riding roughshod over civil liberties, mired in sleaze, corruption and controversy whilst being despised by a large portion of the electorate and presides over a country where elections are materially fair and free, the supermarkets are piled high with consumables and starvation happens somewhere else or hits the headlines - the other presides over Zimbabwe.


vivhill going by the tv footage, normal life looks almost impossible there. To what extent are they showing just the worst while some sort of normality is possible?

Lame, SWL. No-one's setting up rape camps to further the New Labour cause. Please take your bourge opposition to the governance of Britain to a thread that isn't about the deliberate starvation of hundreds of thousands of people.

Christopher, in fairness don't start a thread with our primeminister in title and expect it just to be about Mugabe, start one about Mugabe or his country if that is all peope want talked about. If your asking for a comparason then more and more MPs seem to be laughing at Brown and treating him as incompetant in Parliament, no one laughs at Mugabe.

Only vivhill can say for certain, but I'd lay odds on it that this ->

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7115205.stm

and what's led to it, is what the thread refers to. Not UK politics, (the UK is not, shock horror the centre of the universe), or a comparison of the two men.

For what it's worth, I'm glad that Brown is making an issue of it.

Didn't Robert Mugabe attend the Labour party conference and shake hands with the Foreign Secretary recently?

The cynic in me thinks that Sordid Gordon is wheeling out his "moral compass" to try and distract attention from the difficulties he's having on the home front.

RF

Apologies for the flippancy.

Apologies for my tone SWL

Question: What good are sanctions in situations like these??

They're a message rather than anything practical. Better than nothing?

Sanctions against Zimbabwe - useless. About the only thing we could curtail is the hundreds of millions we send in humanitarian aid. Given that it is this aid that is acting as a bulwark against Mugabe's excesses, cutting that aid helps Mugabe.

More should be done to put pressure on other African nations to step in. I'm particularly thinking of South Africa here. They have the necessary moral authority and the military muscle to do something. That they do nothing and Mandela says it is an "African problem" speaks volumes.

This is not particularly a British problem. Colonialism and exploitation of the past is not to blame here. Until a few years ago, Zimbabwe was a functioning state; productive and feeding all Africa.

Where is the UN in all of this?

Hi LLWaz,
Normal life in Zimbabwe? Good question which you direct at me.
I think the factor which is most important is whether or not one has access to 'forex' As usual most things can be obtained via one way or another as long as you can pay.
Where ever you live there are expediencies which, having been learned, are used. This is the answer for everyday life.
For a political life one has to learn things too and, refering to my earlier comment, choices are extremely limited and exasperating.
The man in the street copes on a day to day basis.
Someone else has praised Blair and Brown for keeping the topic in the public eye but, the media being what it is, the trend is to accentuate the negative (line in a song?) which does undoubtedly help keep the problem in the public eye. This is commendable but, as the way in modern life, the problem is forgotten as soon as it is read.
The complexity of Africa is so very different to what the average man in the street in Britain comprehends that it would take years to explain.
Public compassion can send supportative messages - this will help keep hope alive. Other than that - keep the widow's weeds dusted.