N.Y. Times editorial by Nicholas Kristoff


Binga, Zimbabwe — The hungry children and the families dying of AIDS here are gut-wrenching, but somehow what I find even more depressing is this: Many, many ordinary black Zimbabweans wish that they could get back the white racist government that oppressed them in the 1970's.

"If we had the chance to go back to white rule, we'd do it," said Solomon Dube, a peasant whose child was crying with hunger when I arrived in his village. "Life was easier then, and at least you could get food and a job."

Mr. Dube acknowledged that the white regime of Ian Smith was awful. But now he worries that his 3-year-old son will die of starvation, and he would rather put up with any indignity than witness that.

An elderly peasant in another village, Makupila Muzamba, said that hunger today is worse than ever before in his seven decades or so, and said: "I want the white man's government to come back. ... Even if whites were oppressing us, we could get jobs and things were cheap compared to today."

His wife, Mugombo Mudenda, remembered that as a younger woman she used to eat meat, drink tea, use sugar and buy soap. But now she cannot even afford corn gruel. "I miss the days of white rule," she said.

Nearly every peasant I've spoken to in Zimbabwe echoed those thoughts, although it's also clear that some still hail President Robert Mugabe as a liberator. This is a difficult place to gauge the mood in, because foreign reporters are barred from Zimbabwe and promised a prison sentence of up to two years if caught. I sneaked in at Victoria Falls and traveled around the country pretending to be a tourist.

The human consequences of the economic collapse are heartbreaking. I visited a hospital and a clinic that lacked both medicines and doctors. Children die routinely for want of malaria medication that costs just a few dollars.

At one maternity ward, 21 women were sitting outside, waiting to give birth. No nurse or doctor was in sight, and I asked the women when they had last eaten meat, eggs or other protein. They laughed uproariously. Lilian Dube, a 24-year-old who had hiked 11 miles to get to the hospital, said that she had celebrated Christmas with a morsel of goat meat.

"Before that, the last time I had meat was Christmas the year before," she said. "I just eat corn porridge and mnyi," a kind of wild fruit.

An elementary school I visited had its fifth graders meeting outside, because it doesn't have enough classrooms. Like other schools, it raises money by charging fees for all students - driving pupils away.

"Only a few of the kids who started in grade one are still with me in school," Charity Sibanda, a fifth-grader, told me. "Some dropped out because they couldn't pay school fees. And some died of AIDS."

As many as a third of working-age Zimbabweans have AIDS or H.I.V., and every 15 minutes a Zimbabwean child dies of AIDS. Partly because of AIDS, life expectancy has dropped over the last 15 years from 61 to 34, and 160,000 Zimbabwean children will lose a parent this year.

AIDS is not President Mugabe's fault, but the collapse of the health system has made the problem far worse.

The West has often focused its outrage at Mr. Mugabe's seizure of farms from white landowners, but that is tribalism on our part. The greatest suffering by far is among black Zimbabweans.

I can't put Isaac Mungombe out of my mind. He's sick, probably dying of AIDS, and his family is down to one meal a day. His wife, Jane, gave birth to their third child, Amos, six months ago at home because she couldn't afford $2 to give birth in the hospital. No one in the family has shoes, and the children can't afford to attend school. They're a wonderful, loving family, and we chatted for a long time - but Isaac and Jane will probably soon die of AIDS, and the children will join the many other orphans in the village.

When a white racist government was oppressing Zimbabwe, the international community united to demand change. These days, a black racist government is harming the people of Zimbabwe more than ever, and the international community is letting Mr. Mugabe get away with it. Our hypocrisy is costing hundreds of Zimbabwean lives every day.

Just for reference, here's the URL for the op-ed piece by Nicholas Kristoff.

A Morsel of Goat Meat
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/23/opinion/23kristof.html

Makes me wonder how long it will be before Mugabe's thugs, either military or para-military (aka, the Green Bombers), show up on the doorsteps of those Mr. Kristoff interviewed.

Funny how the NY Times is the last to know about and acknowledge this hypocrisy.

Therefore I take it from that article us ex: ( White Oppressors ) are somewhat BETTER than a ( Black Nationalist )

WOW what a deduction that is, mind you we told the ( Worlds Western Governments) that for many years but ALAS the lilly white governments did not listen to us, did they ...

I arrest my case your hounour / old white oppressor bastard, Peter, we sentence you to life without parole

-Bob F.

With this NYT article in mind, read this one published in the Philadelphia Enquirer five years ago:



Last white leader in Zimbabwe is back
Ian Smith, ousted in 1980, says the country was better under his rule. He has announced a new alliance.

HARARE, Zimbabwe - There is no guard at the open front gate to the house where the nation's last white ruler lives. Ian Smith yesterday answered the door himself, saying he has nothing to fear.

"We're still here," said Smith, 80, the former prime minister in the white government of Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was called before independence from Britain in 1980. "Why should I move? This is my country."

The man regarded in his day as a racist and the most visible example of a breed now derisively called "Rhodesians" is a curiosity in Harare. He is treated with deference by whites and blacks, some of whom give "Mr. Smith" a crisp salute as he walks the streets of the capital.

Smith has not been quiet since black majority rule came into power - he wrote an autobiography two years ago called The Great Betrayal. But this week, Smith made his most public move against his successor and nemesis, President Robert Mugabe.

On Wednesday, Smith announced his return to active politics, two decades after he and the Rhodesian Front were ousted in an election that ended Rhodesia's 15-year civil war.

"We have never had such chaos and corruption in our country," Smith said at the news conference to announce an opposition alliance called the United Democratic Front. "We can't condone it by sitting and doing nothing."

Mugabe's power has been seriously shaken since voters last month defeated a new constitution, the president's first electoral defeat in 20 years. Smith's opposition alliance was announced during a week when government-sponsored war veterans occupied large white-owned commercial farms, demanding that the land be turned over to poor blacks.

The new alliance will contest parliamentary elections in April. The octogenarian said he would run for the 150-seat Parliament if the alliance asked him to.

"A lot of people have asked me, 'Why don't you give us the benefit of your experience?' " Smith said. "We had a fine country here when I was prime minister. A strong economy."

But his new alliance is hardly formidable. Its founders include several aging black leaders, including Bishop Abel Muzorewa, who was briefly prime minister in the 1980 transition period to independence. It does not include the Movement for Democratic Change, the powerful opposition party that has emerged in recent months from the ranks of trade unionists.

Mugabe mocked the new alliance on Thursday.

"It is a party of political ramshackles," he said. "Let them come into the fray and play their part. . . . We do not fear ghosts."

That someone such as Ian Smith could hope to come back from the political dead is partly a measure of the tolerance of Zimbabweans, who only two decades ago suffered through a bitter war.

Yesterday, Smith sat in a stuffed easy chair in a parlor carefully decorated with blue china, African porcelain figurines, and oil paintings of African landscapes and Spitfires, the plane Smith flew for Britain's Royal Air Force in World War II.

Although he is slightly stooped and his white hair is combed over to conceal a bald spot, he is limber and slender. "I keep fit," he said.

"I just want to see order return to my country," he said. "It's a wonderful country. I was born here and I want to see it made better."

Smith says his government was unfairly characterized as racist.

"We never had apartheid in this country," he said, citing the health and educational services that were supplied to blacks. "We had the happiest black people in the world here. We are human and we made mistakes. But don't twist the truth against us."

Smith's white Rhodesian Front tried desperately to resist the trend toward black rule that grew in colonial Africa after World War II.

In 1965, after Britain refused to grant Rhodesia independence without a guarantee of majority rule within an agreed time, Smith's government unilaterally declared itself independent, enraging the British government.

Britain and the United Nations did not recognize Rhodesia's independence and imposed sanctions against Smith's government, but many Western companies ignored the ban and helped the whites keep their grip on power.

A guerrilla war led by Mugabe's Zimbabwean African National Union eventually forced Smith's government to the bargaining table. In 1980, the Rhodesian government agreed to allow elections in exchange for guarantees that whites' wealth and some white political representation would be protected.

Smith was arrested three times in the early years of independence, and his diaries and hunting weapons were confiscated, but the widespread retribution that some whites feared never happened.

Still, Smith believes that under Mugabe's rule, there has been a continual decline of freedom and proper management. Although Mugabe renounced Marxism in 1991 - party members still call one another "comrade" - Smith regards the whole lot as communists and "gangsters."

"They've made such a disaster of this country," he said. "Most people will say to you, 'We had a better life under Smith.' I have no doubt that I have more support today than Mugabe.

"People were told that things were going to get better," he said. "They were told that they would get theirs, they would get all the things the white man had. It just doesn't work out that way. Now they're fed up."

He lists some of the scandals that have bedeviled Mugabe's government recently: the army's involvement in the war in the Congo, spiraling inflation, interest rates of 70 percent, and fuel shortages caused by the loss of credit.

He complains about suspicious elections, when government officials confiscated ballot boxes and spirited them back to "Salisbury" - the colonial name for the capital, discarded 20 years ago.

"Oh, did I say Salisbury?" he said. "Salisbury was a wonderful city. It's dishonest not to call it Salisbury. Who built this city, laid it out in the orderly way it is designed? The British. So why change the name?"

It is as if his indignation is a fitness regime that keeps him alive - or at least keeps him from moving away.

"If I did decide to leave, then Mugabe and his mates would have the biggest celebration," he said. "I wouldn't let them have that."

I read Smith's autobiography. I was a some what disappointed. He didn't show much perspective in the book, pretty much the Ian Smith from 1965 was the Ian Smith who wrote the book. I would have thought he would had mellowed with age and gained a more universal view of the post-colonial situation in Africa.

Regards,

Terry

Guests

Just out of interest the hounourable IAN SMITH ( supposed white oppressor !! ) recently had an operation in Cape Town to rectify some discomfort relating to a prior hip replacemnet.

Ian was scheduled to be at his 86th birthday reunion in Canada / in the the Rockies in early April .... I will find out ( if it is still on ??? ) and if so advise any guests who would like the opportunbity to meet Ian personally.

IMHO Ian Smith is one of greatest statesman and visionary of the 20th Century. A man of honour and a rare breed indeed in todays political world, more than can be said to the bastards that sold him out.

Just out of interest for those into OLD RHODESIA memorabilia

Just released - THE SHANGANI PATROL. dvd
Approx. 100 minutes of digitally enhanced video.


A short introduction and then the full-feature movie made in 1970, on location in Matabeleland. The story of Major Alan Wilson's and his battle to the last man against Lobengulas Impis. This is part of the history of the BSAP - a froce to be Reckoned With.

Also includes the song "Shangani Patrol" by Nick Taylor (1966 recording)



Take care

Peter ( old SOB white bastard )

quote:

Just released - THE SHANGANI PATROL. dvd
Approx. 100 minutes of digitally enhanced video.


A short introduction and then the full-feature movie made in 1970, on location in Matabeleland. The story of Major Alan Wilson's and his battle to the last man against Lobengulas Impis. This is part of the history of the BSAP - a froce to be Reckoned With.

Also includes the song "Shangani Patrol" by Nick Taylor (1966 recording)

Peter

Where can this be purchased?

Thanks

JJH

Nitro X .... ropes beat me

Anyhow here are some of the new releases including Shangani Patrol

New Releases

The Story in pdf format about 400 k in size

General Review of the Movie:

"They chased the Matabele into the valley of their destiny - they were the Shangani Patrol!"

Plot Outline:

The nerve-jangling true tale of a battalion of volunteer soldiers facing the might of King Lobengula's army in Rhodesia in 1893.

User Comments: They were men of men and their fathers were men before them.

Credited cast:

Stuart Brown .... Dr. Leander Starr Jameson
Anthea Crosse .... May Thompson
Will Hutchins .... Burnham
Brian O'Shaughnessy .... Major Allan Wilson
Adrian Steed .... Major Forbes
Ian Yule .... Soldier

Runtime: South Africa:90 min
Country: South Africa
Language: English
Color: Color
Sound Mix: Mono

SHANGANI PATROL is without doubt one of the finest film productions to ever come out of a South African film studio, even if one has to totally nitpick and say that it was filmed in the then Rhodesia.

Based on the novel A TIME TO DIE by Robert L. Carey, this film tells the true story of Major Allan Wilson and his volunteer army of 40 men who were slaughtered on the banks of the Shangani River in Southern Rhodesia in 1893. They were under orders to chase down and capture the King of the Matabele nation, King Lobengula and hold him to ransom to quell so-called native uprisings, but instead, outnumbered and brave to the last, met their awful fate on the banks of that river, when they were slaughtered by the Matabele, who paid them the ultimate African tribute: "They were men of men and their fathers were men before them!"

Marvellously directed by David Millin (whose trademarks of incredible vistas and a very dry sense of humour, despite the sobering nature of the film are well to the fore here) stirring photography by Lionel Friedberg and rousing music by Dan Hill and Michael Hankinson, not to mention the good ensemble acting, make this a classic of the South African cinema.

The film also has some very funny moments, mostly involving a frustrated looking Brian O'Shaughnessy (as Wilson) searching for his boot, while wincing at every thorn and sharp stone his bare foot comes into contact with. Droll humour also comes in the form of the wise~ass American scout Burnham (well played by cowboy star Will Hutchins) who was one of the few survivors of the massacre.

Another role of note is taken by screenwriter Adrian Steed, playing the glory seeking Major Forbes whose refusal to send troops to aid the outnumbered patrol condemned them to death. At the last, Forbes is seen hiding behind a rock, gibbering with fear.

This film is not as yet available on any video format, but copies are preserved in the vaults of the National Film, Video and Sound Archives in Pretoria, South Africa.

Peter

"What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us." - Oliver Wendell Holmes.