keith harmon snow
2002
While
the western media focuses on the "land crises" in Zimbabwe, they
continue to misrepresent the political scene on the ground. Throughout the
1980's and into the 1990's, the Mugabe government perpetrated "acts of
genocide" (at the very least) against the Ndebele minority in the
Matabelelands.
Hundreds of thousands of people were persecuted in pogroms in the early 1980s.
The
media's propensity to demonize Mugabe parallels their reportage on Cambodia in
the 1970's, where US bombing campaigns provoked atrocious conditions and the
eventual death of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. This and the
support for Pol Pot remained off the agenda, until the US turned against Pol
Pot in 1975, and then the Pol Pot genocide became prime time and front page
news.
Ditto
for Zimbabwe. While Mugabe continues to deliver land only to his cronies, the
multinational agribusiness corporations and elite white landowners continue to
enjoy executive privilege. The
media ignored – and continues to ignore --- the Gukurahundi¾ Òthe rain that washes away
the chaffÓ ¾against the Ndebele people, always casting it as
an issue of the black government's persecution of whites. Indeed, Mugabe came
to power on the pillars of land redistribution, but then consolidated his power
with the support of Tiny Rowland and Lonhro and, e.g., the tobacco and chromium
companies from the U.S. and U.K.
Remember
the elite North Korean "five brigade" ? Never heard of them? Thank
Prince Charles, he knew. Thank the World Wildlife Fund. The Observer and the
Guardian knew, but the reports were squelched by Rowland, Buckingham Palace,
and the state department hacks behind Ronnie Reagan¾of course, these are some of
the same people behind the Bush-Clinton-Bush administrations.
It
is only now that Mugabe is no longer of service to the elite powers that he is
demonized by the west. While massacres and torture have been the rule for years,
it is only in the interests of evolving business relationships and corporate
realignments that Mugabe has been cast aside. Still the scale, frequency and
character of his regimes brutality is never sufficiently covered. ItÕs not
coincidental that New York Times directors also sit on the boards of
Phelps Dodge.
End.
Read
the full story of MugabeÕs rise and fall, on this web site, titled: ÒThe Great
BetrayalÓ.