Posted inNews/Politics

The receding spectre of a one-party state

“If you have a country where everyone is complaining, you’ve got a democracy; if you have one where no-one is complaining, you’ve got a problem” (not bad, huh? — © Saks, D — all rights reserved etc … ). Related to the above is the paradox that huge victory margins in elections are indicative not […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Any hope for Zimbabwe?

To sincerely (and fiercely) discuss Zimbabwe’s future, we must first recount what we know about Zimbabwe’s past. The past is the appropriate context within which we must frame our judgment of Zimbabwe’s progress. We know that in the “Scramble for Africa” Zimbabwe became a British colony. That in 1930 land ownership was racialised by the […]

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Zimbabwe, it’s complicated

This month marks two key milestones in Zimbabwe, a country that for over one and a half decades has attracted significant attention to itself because of an ailing economy, limitations on civil liberties and political rights and what has been described as the ”mass exodus” of its people to other countries the world over. One, […]

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On Zim’s wounded political beasts

Addressing the recent ZANU-PF annual congress, party leader and Zimbabwe president, Robert Mugabe likened the (mis)fortunes of his party to those of a wounded beast. “We are now like a wounded beast,” Mugabe said, adding emphatically, “You know how a wounded beast fights. Let’s fight back and restore our own pride.” Mugabe’s unhappiness with the […]

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Malema is out but his message is the in thing

I was at Mbare township’s netball complex on Saturday April 3 2010 for ANC Youth League president Julius Malema’s rally. Mbare is Zimbabwe’s oldest high-density suburb and is also one of the areas that suffered tremendously from the Robert Mugabe regime’s shameful Operation Murambatsvina or Operation Get Rid of Filth, which left thousands of Zimbabweans […]

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Elections 2014 — last chance to save SA?

When the Zimbabwean parliament voted overwhelming in August 2005 to endorse constitutional amendments that would further restrict private property rights and allow the government to deny passports to its critics, exultant Zanu-PF MPs danced and cheered in the aisles. Several apparently even did cartwheels. Similar displays of vindictive glee had reportedly taken place previous, such […]