Former PM of Rhodesia, Ian Smith, dies

[spartan]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article...2214284,00.html (http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,,2214284,00.html)

Okay so what are your opinions on Smith and the former Rhodesia?

Many black and white people from the former Rhodesia (Now modern day Zimbabwe) have openly stated that blacks and whites were better off and would have stayed better off if the country stayed as it was with Smith in charge! :o

Though i hate Mugabe was it really that much better in Smith's white minority ruled Rhodesia?

I know that, even with an economic sanction in place, Rhodesia was of course ten times better economically than what Zimbabwe has become now but is what many of these, black and white, people saying about Rhodesia being better, for blacks and whites, than Zimbabwe is now true?

Or is just anger at what was relative luxury back then in Rhodesia and economic hardship now in Zimbabwe?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Why do you "hate" Mugabe specifically? Is he worse, than say, Putin? Or do you "hate" him equally?

[Xiao Banfa]

Yay! The racist scumbag is dead!

[Ismail]

*Dances*

As a note, Zimbabwe's economic position is mainly due to droughts, IMF sanctions, and the British refusal to compensate for not allowing Zimbabweans to touch white-owned farms.

[MarxSchmarx]

Good riddance. Unlike other douchebags, he never renounced the racism that made him the dickwad that he was.

[RedStarOverChina]

Originally posted by Compañ[email protected] 20, 2007 08:58 pm
Why do you "hate" Mugabe specifically? Is he worse, than say, Putin? Or do you "hate" him equally?
Hmmm. That's a close call.

Then again, why do we have to choose between these two in the first place?

[RedAnarchist]

Good riddance. :)

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Then again, why do we have to choose between these two in the first place?

Exactly, why do you?

My guess is that many comrades here are taking on the outlook of the imperialists -- as it is presented through their media, popular culture, etc. -- to some extent.

Why do you think they attack Mugabe all the time, but rarely (if ever) attack Putin or Mubarak?

[RedStarOverChina]

Hm, the western imperialists do criticise Putin extensively.

But point taken. I also think lefties in the West should concentrate on their home front and build up the resistance against home grown reactionaries instead of being distracted by some vague "foreign enemy dictators".

[Andy Bowden]

Whatever the faults - and outright crimes - of the Mugabe regime, I think there has been a racist tendency amongst many of Mugabes western critics to argue that white Rhodesia was "better" or that it would have been a much better idea to support the continuation of white rule.

All of this falls in with a fundamentally racist position that Black Africans can't rule themselves, and need a white leadership class to rule over them.

[Demogorgon]

Well Mugabe's last few years have ben pretty awful, but saying Smith was better is just absurd. At the very least generous to Mugabe, you could at least say his first twenty years were far better.

As for Smith, he was a racist piece of shit. All this talk of how Rhodesia thrived under him is absolute crap. Sure the White economy did okay (but I'll have words about that in a minute) but there was no development at all for blacks. Either they came to the cities and worked as servants or they staid out in the countryside on their ever dwindling land trying to lie a traditional lifestyle, but even that was impossible because their land was being continuously stolen. (I always find it funny when people claim that Mugabe's admittedly botched land redistribution scheme is proof you shouldn't violate property rights. Most of the white owned land was stolen fromt he black's in living memory).

Anyway what happened to the blacks who did come tot he cities or elese had regular run ins with the white authorities by one means or another? Well they were denied education or healthcare. My Grandparents were teachers and they had to teach the black kids for free in the evenings after their regular work because it was illegal for blacks to attend state funded schools. And it was the same story for healthcare.

Mind you, it would be an over simplification to sya it was all fin and Roses for the Whites. Poorer whites were kept down, denied sufferage etc, and it was inder Smith that my Grandparents had to leave the country for Britain. They were actually going to go back once Mugabe took over before Cancer put paid to that plan.

Anyway, I sure as hell am not going to mourn Smith.

[Lenin II]

Ian Smith was a racist, colonialist imperialist who supported segregation, apartheid and keeping blacks as slaves. Robert Mugabe is a homophobic, racist and anti-Semitic reactionary pseudo-Marxist and a terrible ruler. I don't view one of these people as any "better" than the other, and to decide is pointless. It doesn't matter which of these brutal idiots was in charge--the country is still getting fucked over.

"Ah yes, those insolent blacks were far better under the white ruling class! How dare they assert their right to have power over their own land! Oh, those foolish children should've just shut up, kept their heads down and let us rule them with an iron Manifest Destiny fist. Look at what happens when you let blacks rule themselves, I told you guys they were no better than children!"

The horrible human rights abuses committed by Ian Smith and his regime are not the reason the economy was better off, so to recognize the positive effects, which mostly came from support of other imperialist powers, and think of its racist polices as "better than it is now" is apologist defeatism.

Once more, it is a complete leap of logic to assume that because a country in question was "better off" economically under a racist imperialist regime, and now is worse off under a locally-run one, that the country should be nostalgic or "grateful" for the days of the imperialist one, or that the rule of that system was in any way justified.

[Ismail]

Uh, how is Mugabe "racist"? I also don't get how he was terrible either unless his list of powers includes affecting the course of droughts and holding any sway over the IMF or the UK. It's the same damn thing with condemning Kim Il Sung (problems in the DPRK were and continue to be caused primarily by nature or foreign nations) for being a "terrible" leader when his only other option was to give up to an imperialist superpower.

Granted, Sung was more of a Communist than Mugabe ever will be, but still. We need to support anti-colonialist leaders too, but only as a way of combating neo-colonialism while still remembering that they themselves are capitalists and forming a new bourgeois to replace the old, foreign, and segregationist one. (Unless they're also Communists themselves, of course)

[RedStarOverChina]

Zimbabwean Richard Donald Munsaka, 53, told the BBC News website, via telephone from his home in the north-western town of Hwange, how he felt after hearing that the ex-Rhodesia leader Ian Smith had died.

Ian Smith was a sick old man. I don't begrudge him for what he did - I think he felt he was doing right.

He was just an old Zimbabwean man.

But life under Ian Smith wasn't better than it is now.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7105176.stm

Good article.


By the way, empowering oppressed ethnicities isn't quite "racist".

It would be ridiculous not to recognize the progress made since Smith. That being said, Mugabe is still an ass.

[Dimentio]

Why is Mugabe good?

He has not even communalised the farms, just given them out to a new Zanu-connected bourgeoisie. Remember that Mugabe also massacred people from another tribe than his own in 1980 during the struggle for power.

[spartan]

Is Mugabe racist towards white people in Zimbabwe?

[Dimentio]

No, against blacks who belongs to other tribes than his. ^^

Mugabe is an improviser and a Macchiavellian politician who is mostly concerned with power, deemed from his actions.

[Lenin II]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21, 2007 07:10 pm
By the way, empowering oppressed ethnicities isn't quite "racist".
No, but saying, "The only white man you can trust is a dead white man," certainly is.

And saying, "[homosexuality] degrades human dignity. It's unnatural and there is no question ever of allowing these people to behave worse than dogs and pigs. If dogs and pigs do not do it, why must human beings? We have our own culture, and we must re-dedicate ourselves to our traditional values that make us human beings... What we are being persuaded to accept is sub-animal behaviour and we will never allow it here. If you see people parading themselves as lesbians and gays, arrest them and hand them over to the police!" certainly puts him in the realm of reactionary.