Robert Mugabe is on his way out. May be not. They say cats have nine lives. We have no idea which life this cat is on. For the sake of the people of Zimbabwe we hope it is the last one. Zimbabwe’s emergence as a country was not easy. The people of Zimbabwe paid a heavy price for their freedom from the dreaded British and their unruly subject Ian Smith. Mr. Mugabe was the first President. The year was 1980. The illustrious President has managed to turn the euphoria of hope and a bright future into hopelessness shame and another failed state.
There were two liberation fronts fighting for majority rule and Independence from the British. ZAPU and ZANU. Joshua Nikomo was ZAPU’s leader while Mugabe was with ZANU. Two years after Independence Mr. Nikomo was ousted from his ministerial position and by 1987 his Party was merged with ZANU and became known us ZANU-PF. It has been a one-man show ever since. The tyrant felt he was indispensable and without his wise leadership things will fall apart.
It is a typical African story. Nothing spectacular about it. At the risk of boring you let us recount a few of these human curses bestowed upon us.
* Idi Amin of Uganda 1971-1979. Specialized in removal of organs (bodies were found with genitals, eyes, livers, noses missing) and prisoners were forced to bludgeon each other to death with sledgehammers. (Body count about 300,000 lives)
* Jean Bedel Bokassa of Central African Republic 1966-1979. Specialized in cannibalism and known for murder of Scholl age children for refusing to wear uniform manufactured in his factory. (Money count $125 Million)
* Mengistu Hailemariam of Ethiopia 1974-1991. King of ‘Red Terror’ specialized in using ‘neighborhood committees (kebeles)’ to terrorize and murder over a million citizens. (Body count 1.5 Million lives)
* Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire 1965-1997. Specialized in what is known as ‘Kleptocracy’ where the distinction between state assets and his own was blurred. (Money count $4 Billion)
* Charles Taylor of Liberia 1997-2003. Rain of death on Liberia and its neighbors. Specialized in ‘child solders’ and his personal fortune was greater than Liberia’s GNP. (Body count over 300,000 lives)
* Muammar Gaddafi of Libya 1969-. The puppeteer. His proud graduates included Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone who specialized in hacking the arms and legs of civilians, Laurent Kabila of Congo master of the civil war responsible for the death of over 4 million people, and Charles Taylor of Liberia, at the moment being tried by the Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague.
These are but a few of the various criminals who have littered the length and breathe of our continent. They all have a few things in common. All are ordinary people who emerged through the chaos of the moment. They learned early on the power of terror. They left behind a bankrupt, divided and psychologically scared Nation State. It will take generations to replace what they have squandered in a very short time.
Mr. Mugabe is one ordinary person when given the chance to rise up and shine disappointed a lot of people by his failure to inspire and lead. I guess what they say is true ‘either you have it or you don’t’ what ever ‘it’ is. He inherited a country blessed with mineral resources, rich soil and energetic people. It needed a lot of work. Colonialism is a brutal system. The white settlers were not a push over. They have the official support of South Africa and Portugal and the unofficial but tacit support of the West. They can afford to be intransigent. For Mr. Mugabe it was not a slam-dunk situation.
But isn’t it at a time like this a country needs a visionary leader? Didn’t Mr. Mugabe take the job? As a leader it was his job to inspire his people and build on the energy generated by the knowledge that they are master of their own destiny. ‘Effective leaders generate higher productivity, lower costs, and more opportunities than ineffective leaders. Effective leaders create results, attain goal, and realize vision, and other objectives more quickly and at a higher level of quality than ineffective leaders’. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership).
Mugabe was unable to rise up for the occasion. He mis-ruled for 28 long years. Today Zimbabwe, which was known as the breadbasket for Southern Africa, is starving. The economy is in ruins with inflation running 165%. No it is not a typo it really is 165%. One US dollar is 40 thousand Zimbabwe Dollar. It is a situation where price of goods changes by the hour. Mugabe was adapt at playing one ethnic group against another, he was good at the old divide and rule method, and wrote the book on ‘ballot stuffing’ and vote miscounting. Mugabe can boast of the best ‘security’ service and countrywide informant network. He is lethal in using his goons to harass the opposition and intimidate his opponents in broad daylight. He has no shame what so ever. His loyalists and supporters talk of him as a strong, cunning and very intelligent man. He can be all three but Zimbabwe has only seen his ugly side.
The Lyrics to Bob Morley’s song entitled ‘Zimbabwe’ written in 1978 goes..
Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny,
And in this judgement there is no partiality.
So arm in arms, with arms, we’ll fight this little struggle,
‘Cause that’s the only way we can overcome our little trouble.
To divide and rule could only tear us apart;
In everyman chest, mm – there beats a heart.
So soon we’ll find out who is the real revolutionaries;
And I don’t want my people to be tricked by mercenaries.
Natty trash it in-a Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe);
Mash it up in-a Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe);
Set it up in-a Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe);
Africans a-liberate Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe);
Africans a-liberate Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe);
Natty dub it in-a Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe).
I am sure Bob Morley will be heart broken to see Zimbabwe where today blacks kill blacks, where Independence have brought more misery in the hands of fellow citizens and the population live in terror and abject misery. Mr. Mugabe instead of doing what is right and proper when he had the chance is now negotiating a safe exit. His foreign benefactors will wash their hands of him one by one. His fellow criminals are jumping of his fast sinking boat life vest or not. Even his wife and kids are out of the country. Mugabe is on a free fall. Will someone please remove the safety net! Let him fall in peace. Good riddance of bad rubbish.
Kinijit North America will host a press conference with officials of the Unity for Democracy and Justice Party (Andinet) on Saturday, April 5, at 2 PM EDT. The press conference will be aired live via Ethiopian Review Radio Network.
(The Economist) — America and Ethiopia Woyanne need each other, but their needs are not equal
THE alliance between the United States and Ethiopia Woyanne was born of pragmatism. In another time, they might have been enemies. Ethiopians Woyannes do not like American soldiers tramping on their soil. Americans dislike Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s bad human-rights record. Local elections due this month are a case in point. Ethiopia’s opposition, emasculated by the long imprisonment of its leaders (most of whom were pardoned last year) and weakened by its own divisions, will almost certainly be crushed in an unfair contest. “It’s going to be a stitch-up,” says a Western diplomat. “Control is what this government is all about.”
America jealously guards information about its more discreet military activities in Ethiopia, while advertising its soldiers’ do-gooding: digging wells, vaccinating animals and so on. Officially, it contributes only a sliver of Ethiopia’s $300m defence budget. Unofficially, it may have helped pay for the rising costs of Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s army, one of Africa’s largest. Some say America has a secret base in eastern Ethiopia to move CIA, special forces and “friendlies” into next-door Somalia; America says not.
What is certain is that the closest military ties between the two countries involve Somalia, which America fears may have already become an incubator of Islamist terrorism. That is why America backed Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s invasion of Somalia at the end of 2006. Its own air raids on supposed terrorist targets in Somalia have relied on Ethiopian Woyanne intelligence, though nearly all appear to have missed. American officials praise the Ethiopian Woyanne troops who are still in Mogadishu, Somalia’s battered capital, as peacekeepers; most Somalis see them as occupiers.
Leftist hardliners in Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s government think that its prime minister, Meles Zenawi, is doing the Bush administration’s bidding. That is not how the Americans portray it. Regardless of Mr Zenawi, who must answer to his party’s central committee and is anyway due to step down in 2010, the Pentagon wants to make Ethiopia a bulwark in a region where Somalia is a dangerously failed state, Sudan and Eritrea are pariahs and Kenya has troubles of its own. Ethiopia has other selling points. The African Union is based there. Its ancient Christian history stirs American evangelicals. Its poverty and population (at 80m, Africa’s third-largest) attract development-minded foreigners.
But Ethiopia is too poor to be rated an A-list client state. Even American hawks admit that selling guns to one of the planet’s hungriest countries, the “cradle of humanity” to boot, would look bad. America says the little it gives Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s forces is “non-lethal”: boots, night-vision goggles, medical kits and so forth. It would like to do more to train Ethiopian Woyanne troops for peacekeeping work. A measure of America’s realism is the way it has allowed Ethiopia Woyanne to buy arms from North Korea.
So differences remain. Many in Ethiopia’s 1.2m-strong diaspora in the United States have lobbied their congressional representatives to condemn Mr Zenawi’s government as tyrannical. A bill passed by the House of Representatives last year called for curbs on aid to Ethiopia Woyanne, but is unlikely to be passed by the Senate. Yet it points to a division between those in Washington (mainly Republicans) wanting to reward Ethiopia Woyanne for fighting terrorism in Somalia and those (mainly Democrats) wishing to punish it for its human-rights abuses at home.
Ethiopia Woyanne, for its part, had hoped for stronger support from America over its border dispute with Eritrea. It wants the administration to list two Ethiopian separatist groups, the Ogaden National Liberation Front and the Oromo Liberation Front, as terrorists. America is reluctant. The process is complex; it has taken a long time to complete listing the Shabab, a Somali jihadist group. The Ogaden and Oromo fronts will go on fund-raising among their supporters in America, just as the Irish Republican Army once did.
Aid from European Union countries will probably keep flowing, however patent Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s human-rights violations. China will invest more. But Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s luck may run out. After several years of good harvests, a famine may set in this year. With 8m of its people likely to depend on food aid, much of it paid for by the Americans, Ethiopia Woyanne still needs America a lot more than America needs it.
(Press TV) — Enraged Ethiopians Woyannes open fire at Somali civilians following a massive explosion in the south of Mogadishu which killed 10 Ethiopians Woyannes soldiers.
The blast which occurred early on Thursday somewhere between the Somali capital and Afgooye, killed at least 10 Ethiopians Woyannes troops. Other accounts of the incident reported different death tolls, Press TV’s correspondent in Somalia reported.
After the explosion, angry Ethiopians Woyannes targeted civilians near a refugee camp, killing two and seriously injuring a woman.
Meanwhile, gunmen attacked the Governor of the Southern Bay region, Abdi Fatah, killing two of his bodyguards as well as eight civilians.
Abde told our correspondent by phone that he was in the Qansax Dhere district in the region, visiting government bases and the people on duty there, when the attack took place.
In the Hiiraan region of central Somalia, anti-government Islamic Courts Union’s forces drove Ethiopian soldiers out of Buuloburde and Halgan.
The rebels celebrated as the foreign troops fled at the sight of battleships heading for the town.
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Hundreds of Islamic insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine-guns briefly seized control of a central Somali town after government soldiers abandoned their post, residents said Thursday. It is the seventh town they have taken in recent months although the fighters usually melt away after a few hours.
“The government soldiers left as soon as they heard Islamists are on their way,” said Mohamed Elmi Nor, a resident of Jalalaqsi town, 100 miles north of the capital.
The fighters entered the town in 10 pickups on Wednesday night, some covering their faces with red turbans, he said by telephone. They seized a police truck and left without shooting anyone.
Elsewhere, two body guards of a government official were killed and eight others wounded when insurgents attacked Abdifatah Mohamed Gesey, the governor of Bay region in southwestern Somalia. Gesey was on an official visit in Qansah Dhere town, some 205 miles from the capital,when the attack occurred.
Gesey said, “Islamists … wanted to kill me but my guard gallantly succeeded in repelling them.”
Besides hit-and-run attacks on outlying towns, the fighters launch near-daily attacks on government and Ethiopian forces in the capital. They are linked to the Council of Islamic Courts, an Islamic group that was driven out in December 2006 by Somalia’s weak Western-backed government and its Ethiopian Woyanne allies.
In an unrelated incident, the U.N. envoy to Somalia says his organization has been in contact with gunmen believed to have kidnapped a Briton and a Kenyan doing contract work for the United Nations in southern Somalia on Tuesday.
“There are contacts to see how to free these people,” said Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. envoy to Somalia, speaking to journalists in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. He said the U.N. will not pay a ransom and are not discussing a ransom with the suspected kidnappers. He declined to give any other details.
PENNSYLVANIA — A Maryland man is headed to trial for allegedly fatally shooting his aunt in Towamencin nearly eight years ago. Yeshtila Awoke Ameshe, 34, of Adelphi, faces a trial on charges of first- and third-degree murder later this year now that Montgomery County Judge S. Gerald Corso determined Ameshe is competent to stand trial. Ameshe’s competency was at the heart of several court hearings over the years during which Ameshe’s lawyer claimed he was incompetent to stand trial while prosecutors claimed he was competent.
“We’re pleased with the finding that he’s competent and we are anxious to bring him to trial,” said Deputy District Attorney Christopher Maloney. “The victim’s family has been waiting patiently for eight years for an opportunity at justice. We maintained throughout the last eight years that he is competent.”
Defense lawyer Scott Krieger could not be reached for comment March 28.
In light of the judge’s latest ruling, Ameshe, charged in connection with the June 27, 2000, shooting death of his aunt, Haregewene Bitew, is scheduled to be formally arraigned on the murder-related charges in county court on April 7.
Bitew was shot to death inside a Dock Village apartment in Towamencin, Pennsylvania.
Ameshe, who had been housed at Norristown State Hospital while lawyers argued about his competency, will now be transferred to the county jail to await trial.
During one competency hearing two years ago, Ameshe, through Krieger, claimed he was mentally incompetent to stand trial. At that time, a psychiatrist hired by the defense testified Ameshe had a mental illness that led him to believe his aunt is still alive and that Ameshe showed no ability to adequately assist Krieger in devising trial strategies.
However, at that time, Maloney alleged Ameshe was “malingering,” or faking mental illness in order to avoid prosecution. Maloney called Ameshe’s claims “manipulative, a total fabrication and a ruse.”
Another forensic psychiatrist who evaluated Ameshe and testified for prosecutors claimed Ameshe is competent to proceed to trial. The prosecution’s psychiatrist claimed Ameshe understands the charges and court procedures.
Maloney implied Ameshe knew that by saying his aunt is alive there is a possibility he would be deemed incompetent, remain at Norristown State Hospital and never be forced to serve jail time for his alleged crime.
According to court documents, Bitew, a 60-year-old licensed nurse from Silver Spring, Md., died after sustaining gunshot wounds to her head, neck and torso inside the Community Drive apartment. Several relatives of the victim were in the apartment at the time of the 8 p.m. shooting or witnessed the crime, court papers indicate.
Witnesses told detectives that Ameshe, who speaks Amharic, an Ethiopian language, was being counseled by Bitew about a problem with his girlfriend shortly before the shooting, according to the criminal complaint.
Ameshe fled in a vehicle, which was later stopped by state police, according to court documents. Troopers recovered a 9 mm handgun from the car operated by Ameshe, the criminal complaint alleged.
