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There seem to be a lot of people here perplexed about why, exactly, Mugabe is celebrated, when there's so much there to (rightly) condemn him for. Read up on R

There seem to be a lot of people here perplexed about why, exactly, Mugabe is celebrated, when there's so much there to (rightly) condemn him for. Read up on Rhodesia, and more broadly the anti-colonial struggles in Africa. Africans weren't even second class citizens: the vast majority were given zero say in governance. Legal protections were de facto non-existent. And, in the midst of the bush war, tens of thousands of civilians were killed by the Rhodesian military. Does that at all excuse Mugabe post-Rhodesia? Not at all. But it's important to contextualize him if you want to understand why many still valorize him. As a point of comparison, Americans celebrate George Washington for leading a successful anti-colonial struggle and establishing a republic. But, a much darker gloss is that he founded a white settler republic that enshrined a brutal system of slavery in its Constitution and that regularly committed campaigns of genocide against non-dominant ethnic groups. Indeed, British restrictions on that was a substantial motivating factor for the white American settlers to have rebelled. Reducing Washington to that would mislead more than it reveals, but people are doing the exact same thing with Mugabe. Focusing on Mugabe's very real sins to the extent it obscures what people find compelling about him is limiting your own understanding of the world.

mmsimanga 7y ago
I appreciate the attempt to bring another side to the debate but the point you are missing is that it is us black Africans who are being critical of Mugabe. We all experienced the oppression by the Rhodesian government. It his actions against fellow blacks after "liberation" that we are criticizing. He presided over the murder of 20 000 people[0]. A leader who presides over record inflation no matter the excuse has failed and should step down to give someone else a chance. He had to be removed through a coup as he was preparing to hand over the country to his wife. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gukurahundi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gukurahundi
- rayiner 7y ago
  Many Americans aren’t constitutionally capable of criticizing countries that aren’t America.
  - chessturk 7y ago
    ? Iraq and Afghanistan seem pretty criticized to me.
    - microcolonel 7y ago
      I think rayiner was speaking of the "many" Americans who complain about America constantly, but know nothing else well enough to really compare.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    Which is probably sensible: for most people, criticism of their own country is the only kind of criticism that can be put into action. It's productive in a way that kibbitzing over Zimbabwe isn't.
- scarmig 7y ago
  It's tiring how any attempt to contextualize why some people like Mugabe (which I don't! I repeatedly criticize him in my comment!) needs to be represented as saying that he's not deserving of criticism or that the only people criticizing him are white imperialists. Yes, he did plenty of bad things, but someone who has only read a caricature of him will ultimately be flummoxed when they meet a fan of his. If you've had many encounters with Zimbabweans, you've run into people who do think he is a hero. This would be perplexing to the average HNer who has only read (accurate!) stories of authoritarianism, human rights violations, and hyperinflation.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    Makes me want to compare and contrast Mugabe with Idi Amin.
  - mmsimanga 7y ago
    I understand the point you are making in this comment. The fervent support for Mugabe can be confusing. TO expand on your answer and to inform HN crowd here are some I think people support Mugabe. 1. Once a hero, always a hero. Africans struggle to turn on liberation movement leaders. We feel we owe them our freedom. For some people, liberation movement leaders can never do anything wrong. This leads to my point two. 2. Some families have always associated themselves with liberation movements. It maybe the father joined the party or a son, sister, cousin joined the party a long time ago and family feels obligated to support the party 3. Mugabe was gifted speaker who tapped into the anti imperialist/colonialist sentiment in Africa. He is loved by many Africans because he dared publicly speak out against the West. He always loved Europe until they put sanctions on him and then he turned towards the East. 4. Mugabe ran on a tribal ticket. You will find more supporters in certain tribes than in others. The biggest reason he is still popular today is because of his anti West rhetoric. Which is a pity but to each their own. I hope this sheds some light to an HNer who encounters Africans who think the world of Mugabe.
    - yostrovs 7y ago
      The Westerners may well be aware of Mugabe's end of colonization. But, someone who has murdered is called a murderer. And should be treated as such. Stalin stopped Hitler and industrialized Russia, but he's a murderer. Lots of people in Russia adore him, and though I know full well why, I've never had anyone explain to me why that is. But we have here an African who killed Africans, so we are supposed to see the other side more clearly. Are the murdered Africans supposed to count less heavily on our conscience?
- microcolonel 7y ago
  Unfortunately people are very resistant to the concept that a better, freer Rhodesia would have been a better place than Zimbabwe. Similarly, people will tend to accuse you of liking apartheid if you criticize the ANC. Dead men don't raise crops, nor does cropland without productive farmers produce food.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    This is a little like saying a better, freer Third Reich would have been a better place than Communist East Germany.
    - microcolonel 7y ago
      Well, in the sense that it was a functioning country with a functioning economy, where despite the law people of all sorts had employment and improving standards of living. Fixing the undue separation of society without handing the place over to incompetents and backstabbers would be better, yes. As I've been led to understand it, Rhodesia's armed forces were majority black, and the majority of them did not support the new nationalists at the outset, but the state failed to liberalize, and so sealed their fate. > like saying a better, freer Third Reich would have been a better place than Communist East Germany Yes, if the Nazis reformed away from an attempted socialist German ethnostate into a liberal state rather than trying to take over the world, that would have been a good thing, and probably better than East Germany. In fact, West Germany was basically that reformed liberal state they could've been without quite so much bloodshed (though maybe without the technological innovations necessary for the war, you could argue it would not have been as great, in a twisted sort of way). Altogether it is better to have a reformed unpleasant past than a revolution that throws the baby out with the bathwater. The fault for this, in my opinion, rests squarely on the shoulders of those states who let these institutions run their course until revolution was inevitable, and until the backstabbers could stab everyone in the back thoroughly.
      - tptacek 7y ago
        Rhodesia was not merely a white ethnocracy, it was a state premised on white ethnocracy; that was its reason for existence. I mean this sincerely: I think you might want to make your point about different ways to handle decolonialization without invoking "Apartheid: The Good Parts".
deogeo 7y ago
The worship of the founding fathers... if you will permit me to generalize a little, I find Americans puzzling. When it is time to feel guilty, they are quick to put ash on themselves, and apologize for the racist, colonialist, genocidal foundations of their country. And in the next breath, they claim that to oppose diversity goes against the very ideals the country was founded on. How can one simultaneously hold such conflicting beliefs?
- scarmig 7y ago
  Lots of Americans believe different things. The people who think of America as a fundamentally white supremacist state are not the same people writing slogans like "America Has Always Been Great."
  - deogeo 7y ago
    I got the distinct impression that there is a lot of overlap between those most likely to decry US history, and those that invoke supposedly foundational multicultural ideals to promote diversity.
- eropple 7y ago
  I do not have to think Thomas Jefferson was a saint to find value in the opening of the Declaration of Independence--when applied to all people. You understand that one can be very, very in favor of the stated aspirations of the American founding documents while understanding that the people saying them both did a lot of bad shit and had a provincial and shitty understanding of who those stated aspirations applied to, yeah? Those words are a call for us to do better, and part of doing better is understanding our often-shitty ancestry.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    But I was not referring to only the declaration of independence, but to the US founding and history as a whole. For example, your naturalization acts were limited to "free white persons of good character", so it's pretty obvious the US was, for most of its history, a white ethno-state. It's fine if you want to change that (well, by now it has been changed), but it's just that - a change, not the continuation of some mythical welcoming-to-all America that never existed.

mmsimanga 7y ago

I appreciate the attempt to bring another side to the debate but the point you are missing is that it is us black Africans who are being critical of Mugabe. We all experienced the oppression by the Rhodesian government. It his actions against fellow blacks after "liberation" that we are criticizing. He presided over the murder of 20 000 people[0]. A leader who presides over record inflation no matter the excuse has failed and should step down to give someone else a chance. He had to be removed through a coup as he was preparing to hand over the country to his wife. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gukurahundi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gukurahundi

rayiner 7y ago
Many Americans aren’t constitutionally capable of criticizing countries that aren’t America.
- chessturk 7y ago
  ? Iraq and Afghanistan seem pretty criticized to me.
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    I think rayiner was speaking of the "many" Americans who complain about America constantly, but know nothing else well enough to really compare.
- tptacek 7y ago
  Which is probably sensible: for most people, criticism of their own country is the only kind of criticism that can be put into action. It's productive in a way that kibbitzing over Zimbabwe isn't.
scarmig 7y ago
It's tiring how any attempt to contextualize why some people like Mugabe (which I don't! I repeatedly criticize him in my comment!) needs to be represented as saying that he's not deserving of criticism or that the only people criticizing him are white imperialists. Yes, he did plenty of bad things, but someone who has only read a caricature of him will ultimately be flummoxed when they meet a fan of his. If you've had many encounters with Zimbabweans, you've run into people who do think he is a hero. This would be perplexing to the average HNer who has only read (accurate!) stories of authoritarianism, human rights violations, and hyperinflation.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  Makes me want to compare and contrast Mugabe with Idi Amin.
- mmsimanga 7y ago
  I understand the point you are making in this comment. The fervent support for Mugabe can be confusing. TO expand on your answer and to inform HN crowd here are some I think people support Mugabe. 1. Once a hero, always a hero. Africans struggle to turn on liberation movement leaders. We feel we owe them our freedom. For some people, liberation movement leaders can never do anything wrong. This leads to my point two. 2. Some families have always associated themselves with liberation movements. It maybe the father joined the party or a son, sister, cousin joined the party a long time ago and family feels obligated to support the party 3. Mugabe was gifted speaker who tapped into the anti imperialist/colonialist sentiment in Africa. He is loved by many Africans because he dared publicly speak out against the West. He always loved Europe until they put sanctions on him and then he turned towards the East. 4. Mugabe ran on a tribal ticket. You will find more supporters in certain tribes than in others. The biggest reason he is still popular today is because of his anti West rhetoric. Which is a pity but to each their own. I hope this sheds some light to an HNer who encounters Africans who think the world of Mugabe.
  - yostrovs 7y ago
    The Westerners may well be aware of Mugabe's end of colonization. But, someone who has murdered is called a murderer. And should be treated as such. Stalin stopped Hitler and industrialized Russia, but he's a murderer. Lots of people in Russia adore him, and though I know full well why, I've never had anyone explain to me why that is. But we have here an African who killed Africans, so we are supposed to see the other side more clearly. Are the murdered Africans supposed to count less heavily on our conscience?
microcolonel 7y ago
Unfortunately people are very resistant to the concept that a better, freer Rhodesia would have been a better place than Zimbabwe. Similarly, people will tend to accuse you of liking apartheid if you criticize the ANC. Dead men don't raise crops, nor does cropland without productive farmers produce food.
- tptacek 7y ago
  This is a little like saying a better, freer Third Reich would have been a better place than Communist East Germany.
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    Well, in the sense that it was a functioning country with a functioning economy, where despite the law people of all sorts had employment and improving standards of living. Fixing the undue separation of society without handing the place over to incompetents and backstabbers would be better, yes. As I've been led to understand it, Rhodesia's armed forces were majority black, and the majority of them did not support the new nationalists at the outset, but the state failed to liberalize, and so sealed their fate. > like saying a better, freer Third Reich would have been a better place than Communist East Germany Yes, if the Nazis reformed away from an attempted socialist German ethnostate into a liberal state rather than trying to take over the world, that would have been a good thing, and probably better than East Germany. In fact, West Germany was basically that reformed liberal state they could've been without quite so much bloodshed (though maybe without the technological innovations necessary for the war, you could argue it would not have been as great, in a twisted sort of way). Altogether it is better to have a reformed unpleasant past than a revolution that throws the baby out with the bathwater. The fault for this, in my opinion, rests squarely on the shoulders of those states who let these institutions run their course until revolution was inevitable, and until the backstabbers could stab everyone in the back thoroughly.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      Rhodesia was not merely a white ethnocracy, it was a state premised on white ethnocracy; that was its reason for existence. I mean this sincerely: I think you might want to make your point about different ways to handle decolonialization without invoking "Apartheid: The Good Parts".

deogeo 7y ago

The worship of the founding fathers... if you will permit me to generalize a little, I find Americans puzzling. When it is time to feel guilty, they are quick to put ash on themselves, and apologize for the racist, colonialist, genocidal foundations of their country. And in the next breath, they claim that to oppose diversity goes against the very ideals the country was founded on. How can one simultaneously hold such conflicting beliefs?

scarmig 7y ago
Lots of Americans believe different things. The people who think of America as a fundamentally white supremacist state are not the same people writing slogans like "America Has Always Been Great."
- deogeo 7y ago
  I got the distinct impression that there is a lot of overlap between those most likely to decry US history, and those that invoke supposedly foundational multicultural ideals to promote diversity.
eropple 7y ago
I do not have to think Thomas Jefferson was a saint to find value in the opening of the Declaration of Independence--when applied to all people. You understand that one can be very, very in favor of the stated aspirations of the American founding documents while understanding that the people saying them both did a lot of bad shit and had a provincial and shitty understanding of who those stated aspirations applied to, yeah? Those words are a call for us to do better, and part of doing better is understanding our often-shitty ancestry.
- deogeo 7y ago
  But I was not referring to only the declaration of independence, but to the US founding and history as a whole. For example, your naturalization acts were limited to "free white persons of good character", so it's pretty obvious the US was, for most of its history, a white ethno-state. It's fine if you want to change that (well, by now it has been changed), but it's just that - a change, not the continuation of some mythical welcoming-to-all America that never existed.