O Intermitente
(So long, farewell, auf weidersehen, good-bye)

quinta-feira, março 27, 2003

Zimbabwe: Crónica da Destruição de um País

"You have the jewel of Africa in your hands," said President Samora Machel of Mozambique and President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania to Robert Mugabe, at the moment of independence, in 1980. "Now look after it."

Twenty-three years later, the "jewel" is ruined, dishonored, disgraced

Num longo artigo da New York Review of Books é relatado como num país que já foi conhecido como "o celeiro de África"`a população morre à fome graças a um presidente autoritário, paranoico e corrupto

Alguns excertos:

Early in his regime, we might have seen what he was when the infamous Fifth Brigade, thugs from North Korea, hated by blacks and whites alike, became Mugabe's bodyguards, and did his dirty work, notably when he attempted what was virtually genocide of thousands of the Ndebele people (the second-largest tribe) in Matabeleland

From the start Mugabe has been afraid to show his face out of doors without outriders, guards, motorcades —all the defenses of paranoia. When Queen Elizabeth visited, refused to ride with him in an armored car, and insisted on an open one, people jeered as the frightened man clung to the sides of the car while the insouciant sovereign smiled and waved

In the early Nineties there was a savage drought in Zimbabwe. When members of Mugabe's government sold the grain from the silos and pocketed the money, by then the popular contempt for these ministers was such that the crime was seen as just another little item of a much larger criminal record. United Nations officials were saying as early as the mid-Eighties that Mugabe's government was the most rapacious bunch of thieves in Africa. Well, said his defenders, often members of his bureaucracy, corruption was not unknown in Europe. The secret police were arbitrary and bullying? "But you can't expect democracy of the European type in Africa."

Trágico...




posted by Miguel Noronha 6:01 da tarde