Archbishop in Mugabe protest

Source: The Guardian

The Archbishop of York dramatically cut up his dog collar during a live television interview yesterday, and vowed not wear it again until Zimbabwe leader Robert Mugabe is out of office.

Dr John Sentamu made the gesture on the Andrew Marr show. He removed his dog collar, saying: "As an Anglican this is what I wear to identify myself, that I'm a clergyman. Do you know what Mugabe has done? He's taken people's identity and literally, if you don't mind, cut it to pieces. In the end there's nothing."

Marr was stunned, but BBC staff in the production control room cheered. The archbishop has been a constant critic of the Mugabe regime and condemned the African leaders who insisted that Mugabe be allowed to attend the EU summit in Lisbon. Gordon Brown boycotted the event and German chancellor Angela Merkel said Mugabe's policies had damaged Africa.

While Sentamu praised their stance, he attacked African leaders for failing to stand up to Mugabe. "It is a dialogue with the deaf. It is far too cosy. We need the world to unite against Mugabe. They did against apartheid. Zimbabwe was a bread basket and now it is a basket case. Why doesn't the same pressure apply?"

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,2224901,00.html

When was that? :shrug:

Of course Mugabe is a thug, and I respect people who put themselves at risk to try to replace him with a better leader and a better form of government, but why glorify the way it used to be? Wasn't it controlled by colonialists before?

Now it can't even feed itself.

Produced surplus corn, beef, tea and other agricultural products. It fed itself and surrounding nations, and exported products around the world. A real agricultural powerhouse.

No more, thanks to Mugabe.

When Robert Mugabe decided it was time to establish a single party state and implement all sorts of radical reforms - early on in the 90's Mugabe was kept in check by the more moderate elements of ZANU-PF who were decolonizers but not communists. But over time these moderating figures abandoned ZANU-PF.

There was a land reform policy in place that was infact highly successful, but it was not radical enough for Mugabe who kept trying to radicalize the policy but was getting his ass kicked in the courts at every turn. As Mugabe grew frustrated with the courts he cited Andrew Jackson (let the court enforce their ruling) and unleashed the ZANU-PF criminal militias known as the "war veterans" (good luck finding an actual bush war veteran among this bunch) to take farms the courts had blocked. Eventually the supreme court would come down on the side of the farmers and Mugabe would just declare open season on any "commercial farm".

Now the "war veterans" had no interest in farming themselves, their scam was to rent the farms back to the original owners and just collect the rent. However this scheme was rapidly shut down and the "war veterans" just took to looting the farms. Periodically these characters get caught trying to drive a tractor into South Africa to sell for scrap.

Today effectively the only agriculture taking place in Zimbabwe is subsistance agricultre on a household level. And if your white - don't you dare be caught picking carrots, they will arrest you for that and torch your garden.

Meanwhile Zambia offered asylum and free land to any Rhodesian or Zimbabwean farmer who wished to resettle there and South Africa is breaking under the strain of millions of refugees. Anybody with ANY way out of Zimbabwe has taken it.

In the last few years ZANU-PF has effectively abolished the economy of Zimbabwe.

I commend him for taking a stand here.

I fully commend the Archbishop :thumbsup:

The world community needs to apply pressure and African nations need grow some balls and stop rescuing the bastard.:grr:

Just freeze the funds of his Rhodesian and English bag men, the EU has tried to nail a few of these characters but with minimal cooperation. It is pretty safe to assume these guys are NOT keeping their money in Zimbabwe!

The thing that is most telling about Mugabe is that the same people and families who were close to Ian Smith when Rhodesia was on every shit list are providing the same smuggling and financial services to Mugabe thirty years later!