tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17729840.post6511232400289249623..comments2008-07-09T21:42:21.905-07:00Vusi Moloihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263553951062024224noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17729840.post-58668558781939335942008-07-09T21:42:00.000-07:002008-07-09T21:42:00.000-07:00Your line of reasoning is understandable but I would not outright dismiss "land allocations and rights as well as parliamentary allocations” as nothing. It's difficult to appreciate a situation that is far removed as Zimbabwe is. Living in such a privileged society of North America makes it harder to understand. Our media does not help because they it relies on the politicians for input and the politicians only pursue a certain line that agrees with officialdom (whatever that may be). Thus it's not entirely the fault of the media. Politicians are not at fault either because they are married to this straightjacket thinking of officialdom and so it becomes a no-win situation. In this case that reconfigures the historical perspective and manipulates its meaning it becomes impossible to get at the original truth, and even if you could get at it, there is not much appetite for it. So we are stuck and life goes on while we bury our heads in the sand.<BR/><BR/>In the case of Zimbabwe there are two issues (1) the land and (2) the democracy. What you hear on the media is about democracy but on the fundamental question of the land no one wants to touch it with a ten foot pole. Why? Because there is a long and disheartening list of broken promises and bruised hearts which the British psyche is not quite ready to fess up to. In a capitalist society it is a natural tendency to be risk averse and only walk the path of least resistance with respect to one’s return on investment. What would you do in that case? I have no answers in terms of what I would do.<BR/><BR/>Mugabe is not a Marxist, at least not a practising one. You could compare him to a non-practising Catholic. What difference does that make? The land issue is at the core of emancipation. The basis of colonial conquest was the land grab. The reversal of that is the land emancipation or redistribution. The doughnut analogy is brilliant but since we are not dealing with a socialist system it does not apply. When they achieved their independence of 1980 there was no form of doughnut given i.e. no land was given. The land was not even on the agenda. The doughnut was promised to land in 10 years time but then at that time no helicopter dropped even a timbit (tiny doughnut from Tim Hortons for those not unfamiliar with the lingo). Also we needn't tell the Zimbabweans how to solve their problems but rather help them regain what is rightfully theirs and let them determine their own destiny.<BR/><BR/>A good example of determining your destiny is China. In 1949 Mao Tse-Tung conquered the KMT (Kuomintang) and Chiang Kai-Shek fled to what was Formosa (now Taiwan) the Chinese people wrote their own constitution. They emancipated the land. They embarked on their own programme of permanent emancipation and by 1988 China's economy rivalled that of USA in a period of 30 years between 1958 and 1988 (Americans took more than 200 years to reach the superpower status). Today China's GDP is the second only to USA at $10 trillion compared to $12 trillion. You will find that any country that writes its own constitution and liberates its own land does well economically. Another good example is Russia whose GDP is strongest in a long time. The moral of the story? Zimbabwe must emancipate the land and write their own constitution otherwise they remain stuck in perpetual foreign manipulation. Actually this is a good thing because if they fail they have themselves to blame and not anyone else. Maybe Mugabe should never have signed the Lancaster Agreement? Where would we be today? Keeping in mind that Zimbabweans are among the most industrious and enterprising given the right environment.<BR/><BR/>Moreover in a capitalist society you must be capitalized in order to exploit or take advantage of the available opportunities. It's a prerequisite to achieving wealth. To expect an uncapitalized entrepreneur to fully exploit opportunities available to him or her is like depending on rain for water. He will be struck by a lightening a few times more while his economic liberation remains a pipe dream. Actually someone in Toronto got struck by lightening yesterday and fortunately I had taken cover in a dark basement. Unless off course you win 649 lotto in which case you become instantly capitalized and you can now begin to exploit business opportunities.<BR/><BR/>With respect to the land, it would help to know what are the current figures with respect to the land distribution. It would be even more interesting to learn how much it cost for Britain to knight Mugabe? Any ideas on that? Maybe a few more hectares of land could have been acquired that way? Who knows!<BR/><BR/>Your feedback is appreciated.<BR/><BR/>Cheers<BR/>VusiVusi Moloihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13263553951062024224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17729840.post-73555324815737246132008-07-09T11:54:00.000-07:002008-07-09T11:54:00.000-07:00Zimbabwean land allocations and rights as well as parliamentary allocations mean nothing because Robert Mugabe and the Shona MLAs controlled the government. Robert Mugabe's mandate was to bring economic control and prosperity to the people in proportion to their representation in either parliament or population. (Either would have been a great improvement). Using the excuse of western treaties or deals is irrelevant to Mugabe's failure. He did not deliver on the mandate. <BR/><BR/>Like a good Marxist, he took the doughnut, made the hole bigger the doughnut smaller, and then distributed the doughnut to his friends and the hole to the people. Shonas, Ndebeles and others are not stupid, and that is why they are voting against him. <BR/><BR/>Mugabe should have and could have distributed the wealth better if he had kept up the economic productivity of the 3% of people that controlled 80% of the resources. He sacrificed prosperity for control, where now they control 90 percent of a fraction of the output of previous years. They could have slowed the transfer of control so that they controlled 30% of the output of previous years, to the benefit of more Shonas & Ndebeles. However, he did not do that, and I don't even think he tried. All Zimbabweans are paying, especially the black African ones.Jay Godsehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03791278729450406908noreply@blogger.com