Michael Wines and New York Times on Robert Mugabe: An Analysis

Michael Wines and New York Times on Robert Mugabe’s Election Victory: My Comments and Analysis

Michael Wines, New York Times and the West on Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwean Elections Victory of March 31, 2005: A Typical Example of Western Arrogance, Ignorance, Hypocrisy and Racism!
© Professor Amechi Okolo Ph.D, New York, April, 2005


Your article on President Mugube’s election victory in Zimbabwe published in New York Times, Sunday, April 10, 2005 is typical of your senseless, racist, brainless and phobic attack on a respected African leader. The article titled, “Selective Justice: Tough on Togo, Letting Zimbabwe Slide,” exposes your ignorance, bias, hypocrisy and western arrogance.

You are certainly not writing like an objective journalist but as a paid propagandist in the service of his Anglo-American masters like Armstrong Williams who was posing as a journalist while being paid by the Bush administration to propagate their views. Now I wonder who has contracted you to write against Robert Mugabe and how much you are paid. Anybody who saw Ian Smith’s UDI Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), as you did, as “southern Africa’s crown jewel” is a disgrace and an intellectual dinosaur, and is not fit for the twenty-first century. He is either a total ignoramus or a congenital irredeemable racist. You must be ashamed for making such a comparison. It reminded me of how Trent Lott regretted the end of official/legal segregation in America for which America forced him to resign his Senate leadership. How could a society ruled and dominated by a a very small white minority class be called a “crown jewel” by you or anybody? How old are you? To call Ian Smith’s apartheid South Africa, “southern Africa’s crown jewel” is not only fundamentally ignorant and racist, but a major insult to Africa and the world. It is like calling Hitler’s Germany, “a crown jewel of Europe.” You would be lynched in Germany not just by the Jews but by many decent Germans and others. Or would you call the slave America or the legally segregationist America, “the crown jewel of the Americas” without outbursts of wide protestations from many quarters. Therefore, it is only in Africa that you could have the impetus and the audacity to call one of its most repressive and oppressive period, “a crown jewel.” Do you not know anything about apartheid and South Africa? Please, go to your history books and read up or refresh yourself about Apartheid South Africa before you will again, dare call that system a , “crown jewel.” In any sane system, you will be made to apologize to Zimbabweans for calling their most oppressive system a “crown jewel.” It is like calling the American slave epoch – the “crown jewel” of America. This is a period the American power structure is doing everything to forget while the native-Americans cannot forget the pogrom and the savagery of the era and the blacks are traumatized by their slavery and dehumanization. So for anyone to call that epoch our “crown jewel” is simply callous, heartless and supreme idiocy. The statement is therefore, not just an insult to Africans and blacks but to the spirit of the twenty-first century. I am surprised and ashamed that New York Times would openly let you espouse such horrible racist position in this day and age.

Furthermore, you are so dedicated to democracy and so offended by stolen elections, yet you said or wrote nothing about the brazen electoral thefts in the United States in 2000 and 2004. Or you were completely comfortable with the thousands of African-American votes that were stolen, denied or expunged in Florida in 2000 or in Ohio in 2004. If you are interested in free and fair elections which are noble and commendable, you must start with your backyard in the United States where Bush turned our electoral processes into laughing stocks. There were protests, Congressional hearings and Jimmy Carter/James Baker Commission to study the elections, so the least an honest journalist could do was acknowledge those imperfections in America’s electoral processes instead of pontificating like an angel from heaven. Or do you mean to tell me that Americans do not deserve clean, free and fair elections or that you love Zimbabweans more than you love Americans. Make no mistake about it. I love and cherish free and fair elections and yearn for it, but I believe that like charity, criticism must start at home. So if you cannot critique the massive American electoral frauds and shenanigans that produced W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 and/or too chicken or compromised to do so publicly, you must keep your mouth shut because no one should take you serious until you start being serious and truthful with yourself..

I cannot authenticate the frauds you mentioned in Zimbabwe, but most of them like voter intimidation, scorching of voter lists, lack of voting machines in critical “opponents” areas, long voting hours, insecure vote counting, partisan voting officials and many others sound like Florida and Ohio in 2000 and 2004. So maybe if Mugabe did those things, he learnt them from W. Bush which means that the first place you should start is right here in the United States.

Furthermore, you denounced the African Union for calling the Zimbabwean election, “free and fair;” and for commending, “Zimbabwe's government for making efforts towards creating an even playing field." You stated that, “Nonpartisan election monitors and Western nations called the election grievously flawed.” This is interesting because you defined “Nonpartisan election monitors” essentially as those who agree with you and your western maters and benefactors. Hence, my question to you is who monitored W. Bush’s ‘victories’ in 2000 and 2004? Can you give us their names and their statements? Do you know that international observers were not allowed to observe George Bush’s 2000 “election” and 2004 re-election” – and they were all okay for Anglo-American apologists and megaphones like you. Hence, it was people like you, the Pharisees of biblical epoch that Jesus raved against and called, “thou fools, thou hypocrites!” for their self-righteous and hypocritical ways of outward glowing, radiant and lustrous professions while actually rotten beneath. The truth is that writers like you are intellectual hit men who are paid to sing and propagate their western masters’ voices.

If you do not know, let me remind you again, Mugabe is popular in Zimbabwe and Africa because he wrestled power from a horrible apartheid racist regime of Ian Smith where minority whites held sway over blacks and controlled over ninety percent of arable land. In Southern Rhodesia, as it was then called, 217,000 whites ruled and firmly controlled the lives of four million blacks in an apartheid system that allowed no political, social and economic rights for the majority blacks. In other words, a system where the whites – a statistically insignificant number in the society (.054) firmly controlled the political, economic and military powers of Southern Rhodesia is the “crown jewel” of Africa for Michael Wines and his likes. The regime collapsed after long determined guerrilla warfare waged by Mugabe and others. Zimbabweans, Africans and progressives worldwide love Robert Mugabe because of his historic and heroic fights against apartheid Southern Rhodesia. The Lancaster House Agreement of 1979 paved the way for an election based on universal suffrage which was supervised by the British Governor in March 1980. Robert Mugabe won the election and became the Prime Minister and later President of Zimbabwe. A core part of the Lancaster House Agreement was that land would be redistributed to the blacks after compensation to be paid by Britain, the colonial master.

The problem Mugabe now has with the west and with the western megaphones is that Mugabe, who is now in his eighties, wants to accomplish his life goal by redistributing the land before he goes away. Equitable redistribution of land has been at the core of the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe, so without it, the whole guerilla struggles to destroy apartheid in Southern Rhodesia would have been pointless. Here is what Mugabe said in a recent interview to mark the twenty-second year anniversary of Zimbabwe’s independence as recorded by Baffour Ankomah of African Magazine, May 2002[1]:

Baffour:Was land a core issue even then? Mugabe:Land was an issue. It has always been an issue. The Africans were always complaining about the land, about how they had been pushed into little portions of the country called Native Reserves for a start, and later on they were called Communal Areas. Yes, that was a very deep-seated grievance - land shortage. And the fact that the whites occupied the best of the land in the country, the more fertile areas, and spacious areas for that matter, while the Africans were hurdled together, packed like sardines in small areas. And this is why when you travel, you have areas that were cleared of the African people and made spacious in order for them to become vast estates for white farmers who then prided themselves of owning vast estates in a country where the majority of the people were hurdled together. Baffour:In today's terms, they would call it ethnic cleansing... Mugabe:...Well, they would call it ethnic cleansing naturally, and this is it - they used race, colour - and here of course it was not so much of ethnicity as colour. Baffour:Colour cleansing, not ethnic cleansing? Mugabe:Colour cleansing yes, but sometimes the two go together - colour cleansing and ethnic cleansing. Here in Africa, the two went together.

I personally feel and advocated then that the land should be distributed in 1980 right after his election. As the richest and most powerful “free” African country then, Nigeria played the leading role in the liberation struggles of southern African states in the 1980s. Nigeria chaired the Organization of African Unity (OAU) liberation committee and invested lots of human, material and psychological resources in southern African liberation struggles. I remember arguing on Nigeria’s Current Affairs television programs in the 1980s that Mugabe should distribute the land then immediately. Now, I believe he has waited too long before attempting to redistribute the land. He should have done that twenty-five years ago, but I imagine that he was waiting to be a “nice” man, but after twenty-five years and he is getting old, it has to be done at any cost because it is the right thing to do. Remember, justice delayed is justice denied. The truth is that the west would not have been happy with him anytime he distributed the land whether twenty-five years ago or now. They would always find enough reasons to castigate and vilify him because the west never really wanted the land to be redistributed. Michael Wines and other western powers, their megaphones and cohorts must then answer whether it is fair to let the minority whites continue to control over ninety percent of arable land in Zimbabwe or to redistribute the land; and whether Mugabe did not show enough restraint by waiting for twenty-five years. Or how long would they want him to wait? Or may be they do not want the land redistribution at all.

The truth is that in any occupied state like in the occupied France during the Second World War or the occupied Iraq since 2003 by the American invaders or the occupied apartheid Rhodesia, the occupying forces always found collaborators and saboteurs to betray their peoples and to champion the occupiers’ interests and wishes. The Vichy regime in France collaborated with the German occupiers of France during the Second World War; the various interim governments of Iraq since the American invasion of March 2003 are Iraqi collaborators with the American invaders and occupiers of Iraq[2]. In 1979, Bishop Musorewa, a Zimbabwean, was invented by the west to obstruct Zimbabwean push and struggles for real independence during the earlier Mugabe phenomenal surge but Zimbabweans rejected him then at the polls and voted massively for Mugabe. The point is that Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC must be seen as the present day Bishop Musorewa and his UANC who was propped up for us as very popular then. So we have seen the likes of Tsvangirai before. It is amazing that the west is never tired or ashamed of repeating or inventing similar tricks time and again.

The Mugabe victory in the 2005 election must therefore, be seen within the historical context of Zimbabwe. The fundamental socio-political problem in Zimbabwe now, as it was then, is the redistribution of the land grabbed by the white minority during the British colonial occupation of Zimbabwe. The process through which the whites acquired the best land then was ethnic and/or color cleansing then, and therefore, a crime against humanity. It is also important to emphasize that the whole of Africa was intimately involved in Zimbabwean liberation struggles. Soviet Union, China, Cuba and other progressive forces worldwide contributed massively to Zimbabwean liberation. Hence, Africans and worldwide progressive forces have inherent positive attachment to Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe who was the leading guerilla fighter for his peoples’ independence along with legendary Joshua Nkomoh. He later transformed into a political leader in the tradition of Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamu, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon – all former guerrilla/liberation/resistance/insurgent/partisan/military leaders of their people who also later transformed into respected political leaderships. So Michael Wines, the western leaders and their other megaphones like Nicholas Kristof must understand the Zimbabwean and African sensibilities about Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe represented to us the successful manly Zimbabwean/African resistance and defeat of that most horrible western colonial system of total domination and control in Africa called apartheid; and redistributing the land will be the final and ultimate result of the successful armed struggle to liberate Zimbabwe for which Zimbabweans, Africans, African-Americans and progressive forces worldwide gave their all in the 1960s and 1970s. Robert Mugabe and Late Joshua Nkomo got their training and inspiration from Presidents Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure of the Ghana-Guinea Confab. Also Stokely Carmichael, the great Pan-Africanist and many other African-Americans contributed immensely towards Zimbabwean independence. Therefore, Morgan Tsvangirai, President of the Movement for Change (MDC), the darling of the west cannot gain much traction in Zimbabwe now because he is seen as the Bishop Musorewa of the 1970s who was soundly rejected by the people as not authentic – as being stooges and not representing them.

I am not here to defend Mugabe’s governance, but for Tsvangirai to have serious tractions in his challenge of Mugabe, he must clearly, openly and vigorously support the immediate redistribution of the land in Zimbabwe which will put him on the level plane with Mugabe so that Zimbabweans and Africans will be able to hear and judge him fairly. Right now, he is mainly seen by most Zimbabweans and Africans as just another Bishop Musorewa of the 1970s -- another western puppet who must be shunned; and western megaphones like Michael Wines, Nichol Kristof, others and their masters – as just ignorant, racist, arrogant and hypocritical, and therefore, worthless.
[1] Read, African Magazine, May 2002[1]:

[2] Dexter Filkins, “Demonstrators in Iraq Demand That U.S. Leave,” New York Times (April 10, 2005), p.1