Looking at Zimbabwe today you have to agree. It was better under white rule.?

Question

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060923/ap_on_re_af/zimbabwe_energy_crisis

Mugabe has taken a jewel and turned it into a large fecal mass of corruption and decay.

Lady Pandora, what you said is what I was thinking, but lacked the decorum to say. Thanks.

Answer 1

This is such a delicate issue, but you have a point. I have had friends who have fled their homes in Zimbabwe and have had to create a new life elsewhere.

May I say that perhaps it is not a question of black and white, but a question of experience and diplomacy? The colonial government was efficient and productive, but, perhaps, not completely caring towards the native inhabitants. There were good and bad sides to the colonial government. However, they DID have experience in governing and they did make sound financial decisions for the nation. Since independence there have been very few people in power in the country with the experience and education to govern productively.

I'm trying to be diplomatic, and am sorry if I have offended, or if I have not presented my point concisely.

Answer 2

This is a very emotive question, so please understand that this is a deliberately toned down response (I have V.strong feeling on this matter).

The Question is incomplete. It should be a three way rather then a two way option: Not black vs white but Black vs British vs Smith.

Under British rule Rhodesia was a true gem, if India was the Jewel in the Crown then Rhodesia was the Jewel in the scepter, a thriving colonial out post that was the Riviera of Africa. The indigionous tribes were treated with standard imperial respect and they were not killing each other in great big bleeding batches.
Then came the pull out, Independance and Ian Smith. This Guy was the Worst thing to EVER happen to the country. Mugabe is a intineret Thug and a godless barbarien, but then he does not know any better. Smith was a rich and Educated man... HE DAMN WELL DID KNOW BETTER! What followed we all know (at least all of us with a bit of inteligance and who are over 30), Zanya, Zappo, Crapo and all the other black mindless marxist morons.

We should have gone back in and hung smith from the Gallows...
we should have given the honest and decent black population justice and a fair hearing in a British court... so many "we should haves". If we had then perhaps Mugabe would never have happend.

So, try to remember to not lump us Brits in with the Smith SS.
What ever else, My generation will forever feel a deep hurt whenever the name Zimbabwai is mentioned... for us it will be forever Rhodesia.

God help those we left behind.

Answer 3

Under white rule, Rhodesia had a government, they had law and order, they had a prosperous economy, and they had apartheid. That was their downfall, the apartheid part.

Unlike Mandela of S.Africa, a more pragmatic individual who realized the country would fall apart by dismissing the whites, Zimbabwe took a more radical approach.

The white people were dismissed from not just government, but from ownership of their farms and land, and replaced by blacks with very little experience or knowledge of what it took to be successful. As a result, the country has floundered since this happened and will probably continue to until Mugabe is overthrown or killed. He is absolutely the worst thing that has happened to that country, but nobody seems ready to step up and over throw his decadent rule.

You're absolutely right! Mugabe has destroyed a wonderful country.

Answer 4

Mugabe has been a vicious and corrupt ruler but look into what happened when Zimbabwe gained independence...who helped Mugabe instead of the other leader whose name I can't remember now. As usual, the West, in particular US helped the corrupt person because the progressive ruler would not play ball, that is, would not just let corporate America dictate policy. A similar thing happened in the Congo...look into the fate of Patrice Lumumbu...my spelling may not be quite right, but I'm straining my memory of events of years ago.

Answer 5

No. Because black Africans had to kowtow to a white minority.

That being said, you are right about Robert Mugabe. He's is an idiotic thug who ruined his country out of vanity. Posterity will relegate him to the dustbin of history. I hope the people of Zimbabwe rise to the occasion and depose him for their own sake.

Answer 6

-Better for whom? Agreed, the country is a mess, but that's the price of freedom, the freedom to screw up. The divorce rate might be lower if we had arranged marriages like in some other countries, but for most people the price for losing their freedom of choice is too high to pay. I sincerely hope they can work out their problems and move toward true democracy or whatever works for them. Mugabe is scum.

Answer 7

I am not racist by a long shot, but facts are facts. I don't think it has as much to do with the leadership being black as Mugabe being a self-serving piece of garbage...

Answer 8

Wow. That is like saying Looking at Iraq it was better under Saddam's Rule instead of the US run government.

Think before you talk.

So I can rightfully say that White RULE is killing the USA by your standards of argument.

That is just racist to say it the way you said it.

Answer 9

It most certainly was better as Rhodesia. But this is what the people wanted so this is what they get.

Answer 10

Very true.
And very sad. I am sorry.
Sometimes there is not justice.