Mugabe to Tsvangirai: Please, please don’t go
posted at 9:15 am on June 23, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
The Robert Mugabe dictatorship has suddenly realized that the departure of Morgan Tsvangirai from the run-off election in Zimbabwe leaves Mugabe without a fig leaf of legitimacy. They now want Tsvangirai to change his mind “for the good of the country”, a week after Mugabe pledged never to allow power to leave his hands:
A Zimbabwe government spokesman Monday urged opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai not to withdraw from a presidential run-off, saying this would “not be good” for the people or the country.
“It would be very regrettable if Tsvangirai indeed decides to pull out of this election,” Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga said on SABC radio.
“I will urge him or his party to think twice so that they take part in this democratic process.”
Matonga insisted that the government had tried to curtail violence. However, the entire government seems to have missed how its supporting militias occupied the stadium in which the MDC was to hold a rally yesterday and beat thousands of opposition supporters to prevent the demonstration from taking place. Thousands of people have been chased out of their homes, dozens murdered for their support of the MDC, some of whom were burned alive.
Mugabe wants Tsvangirai in the race for one reason: to give Mugabe cover for his brutal dictatorship. It’s the reason the police forces have never detained Tsvangirai for more than a few hours on the multiple occasions he’s been arrested. They detained him long enough each time to keep him from making planned appearances, but always released him afterwards. Tendai Biti hasn’t been so lucky; the secretary-general of the MDC faces treason charges for opposing Mugabe and the Zanu-PF.
In a sense, Tsvangirai has played a stooge just long enough to get the world’s attention. Now he has taken a rather risky step in refusing to play that role any longer. If Tsvangirai won’t provide Mugabe with his fig leaf, the next time Tsvangirai gets arrested may be his last.
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Democratic process? LOL!
SoulGlo on June 23, 2008 at 9:18 AM
Send in the Marines.
Akzed on June 23, 2008 at 9:32 AM
mugabe is demon posessed as is the MSM. ABC, not a legitimate news source, had a piece on TV yesterday about how Zimbabwes agriculture “once” prospered under Mugabe when he first became president but had come apart from corruption. They seem blind to the fact that White farmers and the Rhodesian government prior to his dictator/guerrilla takeover had made the country one of the most prosperous in Africa. The bas….s all will pay dearly and have a lot to answer to their Maker for all the blood on their filty hands.
wepeople on June 23, 2008 at 9:32 AM
Second amendment justification in Technicolor.
shaken on June 23, 2008 at 9:34 AM
Limerick on June 23, 2008 at 9:35 AM
“Please come back so that we may burn you alive too!”
drjohn on June 23, 2008 at 9:41 AM
What a fu**ing joke that country is.
I guess the rest of the world doesn’t care enough to do anything abut it.
Dave Rywall on June 23, 2008 at 9:42 AM
Get Tsvangirai back in, then dispatch Jimmy Carter to oversee the process. That way, everything will turn out alright. Yep.
jackmac on June 23, 2008 at 9:49 AM
Insanity. What exactly do you think will happen once the Marines roll in? Mugabe’s thugs will scatter, he will flee the country, and then we’ll be responsible for making sure the new guy doesn’t descend into a brutal thugocracy as well, which he is likely to do.
Muswell Hillbilly on June 23, 2008 at 9:58 AM
No. They are making sure their viewers are blind. (Kenya and S. Africa are on a similar road.)
JiangxiDad on June 23, 2008 at 9:58 AM
The liberals of the world stun me in their silence about zimbabwe.
lorien1973 on June 23, 2008 at 10:00 AM
lorien1973 on June 23, 2008 at 10:00 AM
The liberals and the UN are strangely quiet about this.
Unbelievable!
becki51758 on June 23, 2008 at 10:05 AM
I assume you are being sarcastic. On the off chance you’re not, remember that liberals have different expectations for those they secretly believe to be inferior.
Mugabe is a black African, and thus not to be judged or held to the same standards as civilized people. It’s an enlightened point-of-view.
JiangxiDad on June 23, 2008 at 10:08 AM
No. That cesspit is not worthy of American blood. Self-immolation is its future. Let nature take its course.
LimeyGeek on June 23, 2008 at 10:26 AM
Wait, we need a ruling from Carter on this. He is currently reviewing the play in the monitor, and yes, yes Carter has overruled Mugabe and detemined that he is indeed the legitmate ruler of Zimbawe. It was a close call, but Carter is standing by his ruling.
/sarc if needed
Just A Grunt on June 23, 2008 at 10:29 AM
Yeah, what he said, which is not that much different from how liberals/environmentalists wept no tears over the global ban of DDT for decades – because the deaths of 50 million people per year in Africa added up to a tidy means of de facto population control on the poorest continent.
Not that the political left ever believed in population control, no, not them…
Wanderlust on June 23, 2008 at 10:31 AM
Hell, Carter and pal Andrew Young birthed the Mugabe
bloodbathregime, as I recall.Wanderlust on June 23, 2008 at 10:32 AM
Malaria is natural though. DDT is a foul poison, lining the pockets of corporate fat-cats with blood-soaked dollars.
LimeyGeek on June 23, 2008 at 10:34 AM
Yep. I hope we learned our lesson on that. However, I suspect if Obama gets in, the U.N. will suddenly decide to get involved using primarily U.S. resources, and Barry will think that would be proper use of our military. Same for Darfur.
a capella on June 23, 2008 at 10:57 AM
Day one….
Airdrop FM-7-8 (Infantry platoon tactics) across the country.
Day two will take care of itself.
Limerick on June 23, 2008 at 11:14 AM
Limerick,
Gimme a break. The only thing holding back the Zimbabweans is that they haven’t been given a field manual?
Hell, why don’t we drop leaflets about Jeffersonian democracy all over Africa! And don’t forget, “How to create an advanced, first world economy.” I’m sure we could whip some of those up right quick!
Idiot.
The problem is that Africa is a fundamentally dysfunctional continent, with a fundamentally dysfunctional population who wouldn’t know how to read, let alone interpret or apply an Army Field Manual.
Muswell Hillbilly on June 23, 2008 at 11:25 AM
Mugabe’s actions have assured that this won’t end without a bloodbath. Unfortunately, the alternative is a long, slow starvation.
Limerick’s overall point is that the bloodbath should be as quick and effective as possible, and limit collateral damage. Sadly, even an academic knowledge of infantry platoon tactics cannot be absorbed overnight — and a practical level of knowledge would take even longer to instill.
Since only Mugabe’s thugs are armed at this point, probably the fastest way to enhance the “quick and effective” part of the resolution would be to airdrop arms. Specifically, arms that would be useful to a civilian population trying to defend itself against military-supported thugs. Shotguns come to mind.
cthulhu on June 23, 2008 at 12:02 PM
Just gestures.
Thug-ocracy-1
Dem-ocracy-nice try, no cigar
For Africa its the same old, same old. About ten millennia worth.
Speakup on June 23, 2008 at 12:04 PM
Here’s a timeline of African history:
…………………………………….XX….
.
The long line of dots indicate the many centuries of complete African independence. The couple of Xs indicate the relatively extremely brief period of European colonization. The subsequent dots indicate the half-century or more since those African countries that were briefly colonized regained their independence.
.
The moral of the story? Africa’s problems today, both causes and consequences, are the same as Africa’s problems pre-colonialism. Tribalism, lack of any model of democracy or the rule of law, corruption, dictatorships (of which Zimbabwe is merely one of the worst in Africa). The continent of Africa, with vast stretches of rich agricultural land and huge and diverse quantities of natural resources, is nonetheless the poorest continent in the world.
.
Yet, African dictators and their enabling ruling classes still insist that all of Africa’s problems are a result of evil white colonialism.
.
If you believe this expedient racist scape-goating and psychological transference and projection is true, you get a free membership in the Western Liberal Guilt and Self-Loathing Club.
DavePa on June 23, 2008 at 12:06 PM
It’s great that you are keeping us abreast of the news in the former Rhodesia. We need to keep mentioning that the current situation is somewhat due to decisions by former President Jimmy Carter and that Barack Obama wants to follow in Jimmy Carter’s footsteps.
thuja on June 23, 2008 at 12:20 PM
cthulhu,
I took Limerick’s point to be an example of the neocon-esque notion that all peoples the world over are equally desirous and capable of creating a sane, functioning democratic state. Limerick’s notion of dropping infantry field manuals was the military prong of this same idea: that is, that all we need to do is tell them what they’ve been doing wrong, and VOILA!, they will cease their squalid, ineffective, primitive tribal lifestyle and social organization and become the equivalent of Minnesotans – organized, rational, intelligent, future-oriented thinkers.
It’s that kind of thinking that makes us get entangled in 3rd world hellholes.
Muswell Hillbilly on June 23, 2008 at 12:25 PM
Let Jimmy straighten it out.
TooTall on June 23, 2008 at 12:58 PM
Here’s an interesting side story on this whole mess.
NPR is one of the best AM radio programming lineups in the area that I live (sad, I know). Yestreday on my way to and from work, I heard an interview with Morgan Tsvangerai from some NPR reporter who was baffled, baffled by his pulling out of the race. She kept asking him whether or not he was giving up his best chance for change and abandoning his supporters after all this groundwork had been laid.
The man was an icon of patience with this twit. He explained (over and over) that this was not an election and that by pulling out he was in fact denying Mugabe the faux legitimacy he would claim when the inevitable result came out (he also mentioned the fact that Mugabe has already refused to step down regardless of the results).
The reporter simply did not understand. I was as if she expected some magic process to take over once the election was held that would depose Mugabe and place Tsvangirai in power. Apparently, she missed the memo that he had already won an election and that this was Mugabe’s stalling tactic so that he could brutalize the population into voting the right way. No clue whatsoever. And did I mention that the only solution she could conceive of was diplomatic pressure from other African nations (fat chance) and the US and Britain.
Yes, I know this is confirming a complete divorce from reality that many of us had long suspected from certain segments of the population, but to hear it on a radio news program throws the whole issue into sharp relief. At this point, the only solution is some sort of economic embargo (to force some kind of revolution from within once things become truly unbearable) or foreign military intervention. Stalinist dictators don’t care about public opinion unless there is some honest force behind it. Unfortunately, the above mentioned segment of the population will never understand this.
Militant Bibliophile on June 23, 2008 at 6:55 PM
Is Tsvangirai the same leader whose wife was hacked to death by Mugabe’s thugs after she told them that she didn’t know where her husband was?
If we are into all that nation building in Iraq, which serves no long term interests (Mohammedans will always loathe us), why not work to topple Mugabe and start something else here as well?
infidelpride on June 23, 2008 at 8:16 PM