http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080821/REVIEW/322698170

Although, I have to say I heard many a speech at the University of Zimbabwe urging complete expulsion of the white community and/or nationalisation of white-owned assets (down to, and including, state employment of their servants) in the first few years after Independence. I don’t believe Mugabe’s policy of national reconciliation was that popular with black emigres, with liberation soldiers, or with the left of ZANU-PF, and for that reason, I think it was brave of Mugabe to adopt it. That is another reason for thinking it was sincere, at least at the time.

I understand your arguments for supporting the statements, but see a very slippery slope with the need for democratic governments to balance individual/group rights and popular will. The ANC has occasionally made similar attacks on the DA for obstruction. With some evidence. Certainly Uganda had ethnic minority communities that owned property and were obstructionist to the non-democratic government. It seems too easy to say to a wealthy minority community, “if you don’t do X willingly, we’ll do it the hard way”.

How does your mention of the dominance of men of violence in majority politics fits with your argument about the reconciliation efforts being genuine ?

Yeah. Although usually such minority makes efforts to fit in and/or to support (positive) efforts to correct inequality. Many, may be most, Zimbabwean Whites do neither.

“to blame an entire racial group for the actions of some of its members is pretty harsh”

You are correct to say this is harsh. However, it is certainly just in this case. In two successive elections, those held just prior to Independence in 1980 and those held in 1985, the white community of Zimbabwe voted overwhelmingly for Ian Smith and his colleagues from the former Rhodesian Front party, despite (or because of) its continued obstructionist attitudes to Zimbabwean majority rule.

Peter, can any wealthy racial/ethnic/religious minority living in a (developing) democratic country have a long-term place there? In any event, to blame an entire racial group for the actions of some of its members is pretty harsh, but sadly quite common.

And, although I certainly don’t defend at all the terror campaign waged by the Zimbabwe Army’s 5 Brigade in Matabeleland in 1982-3, it has to be recalled that Joshua Nkomo publicly admitted having unsucccessfully sought the help of the (then-white minority) South African Government to stage a coup against Mugabe, at a press conference Nkomo gave upon his dismissal from Cabinet in February 1982. It is easy to forget also that the years of 1980 – 1983 saw an ongoing campaign of terrorist actions (bombings and assassinations) in Zimbabwe by disgruntled whites and/or white south african infiltrators. The arch erected to celebrate Independence on the road to the airport was blown up, for instance, and the ANC representative in Zimbabwe, Joe Gqabi. murdered. (And only next door, the Government of Mozambique faced a very serious South-African sponsored terror campaign in the guise of an uprising by those fascist butchers, Renamo). The tense atmosphere in Zimbabwe was not one invented by the Zimbabwe Government for propaganda purposes, but was very real to people there at the time. Not even a saint, and we know Mugabe was not that, could have continued to believe in a policy of national reconciliation with a commmunity which responded to the policy with a terrorism campaign. As late as 1986, fully six years after majority rule, I attended a gathering of white (mostly afrikaans-speaking) farmers in Mashonaland Central who had still not permitted black people to attend their church services.

It strikes me that the historical tragedy of Zimbabwe is twofold. First, that the white settler population, by delaying majority rule for so long, ensured that men of violence would dominate majority politics when it came. And, second, that, by rejecting the hand of reconciliation offered them at Independence, the white community ensured that it would have no long term place in Zimbabwe.