There does seem to be an awful lot of cricket these days with matches being played and televised practically all year round. I have never been that much of a fan beyond finding some vicarious pleasure when the Aussies are doing well (as usual) and just a little despair that the English team just do not seem to be able to get it together no matter how hard they try.
When watching Jon Howard on “The Insiders” announce that the government would not allow the Aussie team to play in Zimbabwe I could not stop “Its about bloody time!!” to escape my lips. I vividly remember the ban on sporting contact with South Africa over the Apartied and when you compare the regime in south Africa with Robert Mugabe there is no doubt which would come out as the least pernicious. That the world’s nations, including Australia, have continued to look the other way while this brutal and murderous regime has reduced what was the bread basket of east Africa to penury and starvation is the shame of our age.
But in the post cold war political climate it is hardly surprising that the nations of “the west” have had no appetite for using military force to remove this disgusting despot. The minions of the left have been willing to actively support Mugabe because he led a “Marxist” “liberation” party against minority white rule in Rhodesia. The trouble is that instead of a socialist utopia Mugabe has created a dystopian hell that may well never be able to feed its own people ever again. Where the rates of HIV infection are amongst the highest in Africa where there is famine and where Human rights is a vague concept that will never be practically experienced by the people. If ever there was an example of the bankruptcy of Marxist ideology it is to be found in that rather sad part of east Africa.
I thought that the Aussie team should never have played the last tour there and now when Mugabe has become even more overtly brutal as despotic under no circumstances should our cricket team play Zimbabwe at any venue or at any time before that evil man and his despicable regime has been forever expunged from the face of Africa.
Filed under: Leftism, international politics | Tagged: Cricket, in the news
Iain,
I, too, am thankful that the Australian cricket team will not tour Zimbabwe.
It is easy and proper to condemn Zimbabwe – having travelled there in 2000 it was heartbreaking, even then, to see a literate and aware population being crushed by a totalitarian government.
People have difficulty dealing with Mugabe given his perceived role as liberator of Zimbabwe and his now role as despot. MDC supporters I spoke to in 2000 wanted him to do the right thing by stepping down rather than seeking to expel him. They spoke of him like he was an old man who should retire rather than a murderer.
Everyone (except for African nations) rightly condemns Zimbabwe but no-one does anything. It is as you say a real shame but begs the question: what should be done?
The minions of the left have been willing to actively support Mugabe because he led a “Marxist” “liberation” party against minority white rule in Rhodesia.
Really – who on the left has actively supported the actions of Mugabes regimes Iain? You also imply with ‘the minions of the left’ that he has some broad support from the left. This is a disgraceful sledge – no one I know, left or right, supports this man.
The only thing the left uses Mugabe for, is as an example that, for all the right wing spin, liberating the people of Iraq from a terrible dictator ISN’T what the Iraq war was about. Otherwise we’d be freeing these people too.
So give us some names or withdraw this stupid ‘left supports totalitarian regimes’ meme.
PS – Zimbabwe isnt considered in East Africa either – that would be like saying Melbourne is in Queensland…
PKD
I am willing to concede that NOW most on the left are happy to denounce Mugabe but it has definitely not always been so:
I draw your attention to the past tense of this sentence. If the minions of the left have repented their previous support for this evil man that is something I will acknowledge but it does not provide any basis for me having to apologise for citing their previous support does it?
Zimbabwe is on the eastern side of the African content and in the same way that we can say the Melbourne is in eastern Australia we it is legitimate to say that Zimbabwe in eastern Africa..
I think Iain is correct that Zimbabwe, Kenya et al are considered to constitute East Africa. And yes, in the 1960s and 70s there was left-wing support for Mugabe, Kenyatta and other liberationist leaders in Africa. The Left quickly washed its hands of Mugabe when he started murdering Ndebeles and involving himself in internicene African wars though. Western governments continued to support old Bob long after the Left abandoned him (he was knighted by the Queen sometime in the mid-1990s, for example). His recent policy of land redistribution might look like socialism but it is more about making scapegoats of white land owners and paying off political thugs and cronies.
No – your sentence (and piece) clearly implies that many on the left give PRESENT day support for Mugabe based on his actions in the past. That’s balatantly untrue. If you implied that the support he had from the left was in the past only then I suggest you clear that up, becuase its very misleading at present.
Also, and I admit to not knowing on this one, what exactly are Mugabes links to Marxism? I didn’t realise his regime is following a Marxist / socialist model, so perhaps you can provide some info on where you got that one? Tx!
PKD it is not my place to educate you on African history but this may give you some idea
from here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mugabe
As you can see he is was both a follower of Mao and the Russians, clearly a Marxist but these days indistinguishable from your average despot.
Oh and welcome to my blog Steve
I draw your attention to the past tense of this sentence.
No Iain, this is present tense and perfect aspect. It denotes a state of affairs that was the case in the recent past and continues to be the case at least until the present.
In any case, can you point out anyone who did actively support Mugabe? If you can, can you show that they did anything but renounce their support when he turned out not to be as good as they thought? And before you say it, there’s nothing wrong with this. Saddam Hussein enjoyed the direct financial and military support of the United States during Iraq’s war with Iran. The Taliban took over Afghanistan after the collapse of the Soviet Union with US support too, and Bin Laden was trained and armed by the CIA before he turned against the west.
Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with people changing their minds about others, on the contrary, I think it’s much more important to be able to change one’s mind than to be consistent with earlier, wrong views.
You do know that Mugabe came to power in 1980 with the direct help of Malcolm Fraser, don’t you? Again, this wasn’t a bad thing, Fraser was facilitating the end of unconditional white-rule and apartheid. It just turned out that Mugabe is insane, despotic and brutal.
Maybe the UN will organise a cricket tour.
Ian,
Good on you for providing the info.
But Jangari is right. I was thinking along similar lines – you make the argument about the lefts past support while neatly omitting the rights support for both Saddam and Bin Laden in the 80s. So it seems to me too that you were indeed trying to talk about the present tense.
Anyway Iain, don’t you agree that the blind eye being turned by the West in regards to human rights arocities in both Zimbabwe and Sudan shows up the attempt to justify the Iraq war as ‘liberating opporessed people’ to be nothing more than right wing spin???
Where’s the liberation for the oppressed people of these nations Iain?
Rgrds,
PKD
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Iain – your submission system seems to be malfunctioning – comments are not get updated for some reason???
Apropos of nothing, did you know that the UN has less members than FIFA?
Melanie Philips has a great column in the Daily Mail (UK) on this subject today:
“At last! A leader with courage AND conviction – and, surprise, he’s not British
Just what was that ghostly and unfamiliar noise we heard over the weekend? Good heavens – it was the sound of a country’s political leader actually exercising leadership.
The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, ordered his nation’s cricket team to pull out of a scheduled tour of Zimbabwe in September, and even threatened to suspend the players’ passports if the sport’s governing body did not abide by his decision. ”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/dailymail/home.html?in_page_id=1766
Whilst I agree that it is good that the cricket tour has stopped from going ahead, I am seriously concerned that the Australian Govt has misused some of its powers in relating to passports in a dangerous precedent in order to make this happen, for the sake of short term political expediency.
I have just written a post on my blog about this matter, which explains my concerns in greater detail.
Actually PKD I would instead suggest that the left’s intense lobbying that has suggested that even a man as brutal and evil as Saddam should not be removed from power by force is the reason that well meaning people in western governments are unwilling to waste the lives of their soldiers and their treasure in the removal of dictators like Mugabe. The leftwing media have done a good job of making it politically impossible for the west to do anything meaningful in places like Zimbabwe.
After all who wants to try to help a people who will not appreciate your efforts? And who wants to be denounced at home if you try?
I take it you have still not read Cohen eh PKD?
I read your piece Strider where you make the claim that using the passport act would be an abuse of power but you fail to explain WHY you believe this and I invite you to make an explanation because just stating something does not make it so.
Iain,
Your suggestion ignores that the horrific state of affairs in Zimbabwe is not new and predates September 11 2001 and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can I suggest you read documents like the US Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor for 2000 at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2000/af/852.htm and see how grim things were in Zimbabwe even back then?
Your suggestion, though, raises an interesting question about why Western powers have not since the 1990s and are now not prepared to intervene in Zimbabwe. Personally, I don’t think it rates as a real issue for the West except for when cricket tours come up. (Howard to his credit sought to make the Commonwealth take a role but the Commonwealth failed becasue of division of countries generally along the lines of western versus non-western.) It is seen as an African problem because to put it blunty Africans are killing each other in Africa and are not (thankfully) blowing themselves up in Western countries. There is also the legacy of past imperalism and a desire not to renew them. Witness the UN’s shameful inaction in Rwanda, which predates the Irag war.
I know this is your blog but I recommend you read George Orwell’s “Inside the Whale” if you have not. It is an excellent article about political writing available here: http://www.ourcivilisation.com/decline/orwell1.htm
I refer you specifically to his discussion on meaningless words and would add to his quote that “[o]ther words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.” I would update that list to include the modern equivalent of progressive and reactionary: left and right.
Rudi
I am a great fan of Eric Blair’s work he was the sort of left wing writer who I actually respect. He had the personal integrity to run his own line where as so many leftist then and now are just following the orthodox line with out any though to what they are actually standing for.
Iain,
Old Eric would be dismayed you call him left wing; also, your frequent use of the expression left (or variants of it)! I suppose it proves that “left” (like “right”) is a meaningless word and merely shows personal dislike (or like depending on your politics).
I’m going to stick to calling myself a conservative and let others do the marching: left, right, left, right …
Surely a person can decide with integrity that they stand for an orthodox line, for example, members of the Liberal and Labor party despite much huffing and puffing around the fringes mainly tow the party line. What about religous men and woman who accept faith in a church – do they lack integrity? Or the child who accepts a law rather than breaks it?
Rudi.
Sure that seems reasonable Rudi but what I am talking about is those individuals who don’t even think about it at all.
I make no apology for being fond of using the terms of the left, leftist, ect; the reality that these are very imprecise terms does not escape me at all. But what ever name or term that I choose to describe those people who like to think that they are “progressives”(progressing to what?) does not matter as long as my readers know to whom I am referring does it? That meaning will of course largely come from the context anyway.
Actually PKD I would instead suggest that the left’s intense lobbying that has suggested that even a man as brutal and evil as Saddam should not be removed from power by force is the reason that well meaning people in western governments are unwilling to waste the lives of their soldiers and their treasure in the removal of dictators like Mugabe.
No Iain, the intense lobbying against the war in Iraq, is becuase we went to war on false evidence and for the wrong reasons. No one is saying Saddam didnt deserve removal, but thats not the reason for the war – it was WMDs remember? It certianly wasnt about liberating the people that became a convenient backup excuse when the WMDs were found to be non-existent.
And that nothing is being done in Zimbabwe is certainly NOT due to left wing lobbying against the Iraq war – it’s much more down to Zimbabwes lack of strategic importance!
Dear Iain,
It seems then you fall into the trap of most partisan people which is to assume those who disagree with them are unthinking.
I am also alarmed that you should express yourself with words that you acknowledge are imprecise in the hope that your readers know who you mean. Is that the blog equivalent of an in joke?
Rudi.
Rudi
This site is a blog and I have no pretensions that it is anything more than my personal opinions about life and the universe. You seem to want to hold me to an impossible standard here.
I see my blog as an ongoing conversation over a cuppa; I am not writing an academic treatise and yet you expect that level of rhetorical rigor. I suggest if that is what you are looking for then you start haunting a university library instead of my blog.
Cheers
Iain
The leftwing media have done a good job of making it politically impossible for the west to do anything meaningful in places like Zimbabwe.
That’s drawing a very long bow, Iain. Both the left- and right-learning media have consistently drawn attention to the brutality of Mugabe’s regime, particularly the English press. It is the inaction of Western governments of both ilks which has elevated and protected Mugabe. British and Commonwealth observers declared the 1980 election to be free and fair when it was no such thing; the Thatcher government just wanted out of the whole mess; the Fraser government here backed Mugabe to the hilt. These governments knew about political violence and the mass murder of Ndebeles in the 1980s, doing and saying virtually nothing.
The simple fact is that Western leaders see nations like Zimbabwe as political basket-cases, and the risks of intervention far outweigh the benefits, both strategic and economic. The West has had its fingers burned several times in Africa (e.g. the Belgian Congo fiasco, Clinton’s foray into Somalia) and I suspect most are happy just to condemn Mugabe without doing much else, a spineless but conservative approach. Still, that has more to do with geopolitics and realpolitik than some moral burden imposed by the left-wing media.
Well said Steve – that hits the nail pretty well on the head. Of course its a bitter pill for Iain, who’d much rather blame all the worlds ills on the collective left – which saves have to think any harder.
Zimbabwe shows up that for all the spin in Iraq, the West isn’t interested in liberating people who live in countries that dont have strategic resources.
So I suspect it will be a long time before Iain comes back to this topic, seeing as it both shows up the Wests inaction to stop a brutal dictatorship (outside of an resource valuable area) and exposes the right-wing lie that Iraq is somehow about liberating an oppressed people.
Rgrds,
PKD
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Welcome Back Steve
You are probably right about all verities of the media being anti-intervention. But I just think that the left have been more vocal about that sort of thing.
Africa seems to be with a few notable exceptions to be a terrible basket case and I really don’t see that it is going to change any time soon. The trouble is that we in the west are expected by moral crusaders like Geldof or Bono to do something about the poverty and famine and I just want to say leave them to their fate when I think about how Mugabe has bankrupted that country and impoverished it to the extent that its people starve. So how do we reconcile the real Politic imperatives with the moral one to help the millions who suffer under despots like Mugabe?
Government in Africa is infinitely difficult because it is complicated by a host of factors: tribalism, regional and internicene disputes, poverty, remnant colonialism, Western and IMF interference, Chinese interference, systemic and local corruption, etc. Perhaps strong centralised government is the only way out of this quagmire but in almost all cases it gives way to tinpot dictators like Mugabe, Bokassa, Idi Amin.
The short answer Iain is that “I don’t know”. But I’m sure the left is not any more or less responsible for this than the Right – or Africans themselves, many of whom continue to make excuses for tyrants, corruption and poverty (most Nigerians think that 419 scams, for instance, are quite a legitimate way to bring money into their country).
Iain,
Sorry you see my presence as haunting and a suggestion that you could be clearer in your writing as asking too much.
I won’t take you up, though, on your suggestion that I haunt university libraries – you can’t drink tea or talk!
Cheers,
Rudi
you can’t drink tea or talk!
A major drawback that’s for sure