via Hate speech from Cape to Cairo – The Zimbabwean 4 February 2015 by Jera
President Mugabe has been elected AU president. Already there are signs that Mugabe will spread his usual hate speeches, from Cape to Cairo, after he declared ‘Africa for Africans’ – despite millions of his own people living as economic refuges abroad. Add to that, we have already heard one homophobic joke; ‘men can’t bear children, and neither can the gays.’
Mugabe promised that his tenure as AU chairman would be on ‘issues of infrastructure, value addition and beneficiation, agriculture and climate change.’ We heard him mention Africa’s poor roads and combating, of all things, Ebola and employment creation – all this from a man whose country has dilapidated infrastructure, an agricultural sector that has continually failed to produce sufficient food for its own people, cholera and typhoid outbreaks and 90% unemployment.
In Addis Ababa, Mugabe bragged that Zimbabwe’s tobacco production has surpassed levels achieved prior to land reform but he neglected to mention the amount of deforestation taking place, as farmers use firewood, in lieu of coal, in curing tobacco, due to the rail network’s collapse.
He has failed in 35years to provide the basics – food, jobs, shelter, and clean running water – for just 14million people. How can he possibly do anything for 1,1billion Africans?
Africans should really be worried. The job of the AU chairman is to mobilize solutions in tackling the continent’s many troubles. Mugabe has already proved incompetent in that regard. Zimbabweans should worry even more.
After years of suffering, what most hope for is to see the back of Mugabe rather than seeing him gain more influence. – Till next week, my pen is capped. Jerà. Follow me on Twitter @JeraZW
COMMENTS
This article is well written. Mugabe will never preach peace in Africa. If he does, then tell us why is his words starts with the Western countries? He got an opportunity that he he is granted by Africa to start a fight, malicious speech to Western countries. A true leader leads by example. What example is Mugabe portraying to African people? I dont think him being elected as AU chairman is a true choice but shows that the Africa itself is afraid of opposing and decision against Mugabe. If you have more than 3 million of your people living outside your country face all sorts of discrimination, how could you preach peace to people and expect them to believe you if they are not scared of you? This is not an attack but truth. People are displaced from their loved ones, family and friends. Is that what you can say peace? People have shown fear and end up respect because they cant do anything to him. Which of the roads are said to be new in Zimbabwe which were built after 2002? So what kind of infrastructure is he talking about? Taps, roads buildings have just became dysfunctional and wants people to believe in him? No there is no legacy he can leave that his people will be proud of. No no no. What food will he bring to hos people. If you are a father at home, you cant look after your family, how could peacefully convince outsiders that you are a good person to represent the community? No ways he yurn things up never, what happened in the previous 35 years of his leadership? Africa should be thinking of people’s rights and encourage good things to human lives. Africa should stop this pseudonym, say the reality to its people. People are human being who must be treated with all dignitaries as human being! Why should africa alow such things to happen? The standard of living in Zimbabwe is completely sub standard, the country doesn’t have its own money but it lectures economic lessons about africa! This is shame, very shame?
“The new European Parliament will include a German party leader who has said, I quote, ‘Europe is the continent of white people and it should remain that way’; a French party leader who has compared peaceful Muslim street prayers to the military occupation of her country by the Nazis; an Italian member who has been found guilty of arson for setting fire to the pallets of migrants sleeping under a bridge. There is a road to perpetration of human rights violations. And hate speech – particularly by political leaders – is on that road.” (37″)
With over 5 million #JeSuisCharlie tweets and 3.7 million demonstrating in the street, the reaction of the French and European political-media elites has been masterful. The problem is, European leaders’ behavior shows that nothing about this resurgence of French and European unity was about either free speech or defending Europe from Islamism.
It’s been widely-noted that many attendees of the Sunday march were hardly paragons of free speech. Shortly after the march, French President François Hollande and his Prime Minister Manuel Valls’ police arrested the mixed-race comedian Dieudonné and up to 100 other people for “defending terrorism” on social media.
What was the #JeSuisCharlie demonstration about if not about free speech then? The shortest answer would be: emopolitik. As Colin Liddell has defined it, emopolitik is: “the achievement of political goals and the destabilization of rival political systems through the selective mobilization and projection of decontextualized human emotions and sympathies through social media.”
Concretely, this has meant giving massive publicity and a momentous political significance to the 17 people killed in the Charlie Hebdo and related attacks. This contrasts sharply with the treatment given to any number of other recent tragedies: the 1,400 girls raped by largely Pakistani gangs in Rotherham, England, the tens of tho
In raising up Charlie Hebdo as opposed to these other tragedies, European elites were stressing the importance of freedom of speech to criticize Muslims and blaspheme against Islam.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán – a rare quasi-nationalist among European leaders – used the Paris march to condemn immigration: “Economic migration is a bad thing in Europe. We should not look at it as something useful, because it only means trouble and danger to the European people. Migration should be stopped. That’s Hungary’s opinion. We don’t want to ingest a significant minority with a cultural nature and background that is different from ours. We would like to keep Hungary Hungarian.” British Prime Minister David Cameron wasted no time in the wake of the attacks, saying that all means of communication free of government spying should be banned:
Thousands of raped women, hundreds of murders through terrorism, and blighted cities appear to be acceptable collateral damage to the ruling elites. But this will become less tenable over the years as Europe’s demography increasingly resembles that of Bosnia: already today about one third of births in France are estimated to be non-European. Add schizophrenic European governments and politicians who support both agitation against Muslims and further displacement-level Muslim immigration to the equation, and it’s clear to see that despite the recent display of unity following the Hebdo attacks, the ruling elites (on both sides of the Atlantic) are no friends of Europe.
The ruling elites of the West are only good at playing these kind of games, seemingly not realizing that they’re likely leading the West into a dark future, marked by violent ethnic strife and perhaps, even civil war(s).
“Call the Republican Party,” One narrator intones, “Tell them you’ve had enough of the Mob.” To Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the nay-sayers were “evil-mongers.” Indiana Democratic Rep. Baron Hill called them “political terrorists,” and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused them of carrying swastikas. (One swastika was seen at a rally, but it had a line through it. The protestor wasn’t identifying with Nazism, he was…well, who knows what he was saying?). Hitler allusions have become ubiquitous – Rep. Brian Baird, D-Washington, accused the town hallers of “brown-shirt tactics” – and so has the practice of impugning the worst possible motives to one’s political opponents.
“Sometimes I think they want Obama to get shot,” liberal radio man Ed Schultz said recently. “I really think that there are conservative broadcasters in this country who would love to see Obama taken out. They fear socialism. They fear Marxism.”
Pelosi, along with Steny Hoyer, the number two Democrat in the House, penned an op-ed article decrying those who disrupt debate at town hall meetings, saying that such behavior is “un-American.” Three years ago, however, when her party was in the minority, Pelosi told a group of anti-war protestors: “I’m a fan of disruptors. There’s nothing more articulate, more eloquent for a member of Congress than the voice of constituents.”
The juxtaposition of these two statements begins to reveal the problem. The trouble is a partisanship so entrenched that it’s reflexive, and unreasoning. The hate-tinged sniping at “red America” by “blue America” and vice versa more resembles the turf wars of the L.A.-based street gangs the Crips (blue bandanas) and the Bloods (red bandanas) than any kind of deeply principled philosophical difference of opinion. Anything bad said about my homeys is a blood libel. Anything bad said about the other guy is obvious truth, or free speech or, you know, just satire. Lighten up, dude. So those spewing their political animus toward President Mugabe also suffer from this very Western hate towards its opponents and this is certainly not an African disease but the most prevailing human defect in all of us!