[EM]

[bbadonov at yahoo.com]

>From ???@??? Mon Oct 02 13:18:08 2000
X-Sender: asimmons at krl.org (Unverified)
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.5 (16)
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 12:53:58
To: election-methods-list at eskimo.com
From: Anthony Simmons <bbadonov at yahoo.com>
Subject: Zimbabwe
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>> From: "Narins, Josh" <josh.narins at lehman.com>
>> Subject: Zimbabwe


>> (Speaking of bashings, has anyone else been following the
>> election in Zimbabwe?  Talk about bashings!  Zimbabwe is now
>> a dictatorship.)

>> Zimbabwe has been a dictatorship for many, many years.

Mugabe didn't start out as a dictator.  He used to be the
liberator of Zimbabwe.  Even in the last election, there was
no indication of election fraud.  It's only been in the past
few years, when he realized he couldn't win another election
(he won the last won by a tiny margin) that he's started
suppressing the independent press, encouraging people to kill
his opponents.

>> However, I really don't know who the MPDC (the opposition)
>> was.

MDC.  Movement for Democratic Change.

>> I am SURE the opposition was being funded by European or
>> American secret services. Why am I sure? Because Mugabe
>> seizes white owned farms (they still have 95% of the
>> productive farmland of Zimbabwe, being 5% of the
>> population) and doles out the land.

Yep.  That's the Mugabe propaganda.  But the government
doesn't grab the land; there's no actual reform program.
They just look the other way so that people who want land can
kill the farmers or run them off -- mostly done by people who
have no other means of making a living.  In a country with
over 50% unemployment, it's not hard to find desparate people
who will do anything to "reform" some land.  The Supreme
Court told Mugabe that the government has to defend the
farmers, but he refused.

Hard to call any of that "reform".  Nobody in Zimbabwe
believes it's anything more than a pretense.

>> Too bad he's gotten old, and now only doles it out to his
>> cronies. Otherwise, he might have an argument.

Actual land reform is a fairly old issue in Zimbabwe.  Even
his opponents recognize it.  But wholesale murder,
terrorizing the population, suppression of the press,
election fraud, that's what Mugabe is passing off as
"reform".  Nobody in Zimbabwe believes it, even the
perpetrators.