In Zimbabwe the SU
> and China supported ZAPU and ZANU respectively. Well, on the eve of
> liberation they formed the Patriotic Front and a government supposedly
> based on this, and within three years Mugabe unleashed his famous North
> Korean trained brigade onto the supporters of Zapu in a little gencidal
> operation that forced Nkomo to disband his party and left Mugabe in
> undisputed power. Today Mugabe is presiding over a second genocide - 7
> million (more than half of Zimbabwe's population) are now facing
> starvation.
Tahir also brought up Rwanda. Anyone here who is also on the Socialist Register list (the one that never discusses any pieces in the Socialist Register!) read, "Making Sense of Political Violence in Postcolonial Africa, " by Mahmood Mamdani? Or his recent book? Mamdani wrote a classic back in the 70's published by Monthly Review Press.
On the DPRK, Mugabe and the massacre of thousands by the North Korean
trained Fifth Brigade or Gukurahundi in Matebeleland.
http://www.oneworld.org/news/reports/jul97_zimbabwe.html
A chronicle of post-independence massacre By Lewis Gaba
>From AFRICA NEWS
16 July 1997,
Zimbabwe
To stem an insurrection in its southern province, Zimbabwe's post- independence government massacred an estimated 7,000 civilians between 1980 and 1988. The Catholic Church has compiled a report titled, Breaking the Silence - Building True Peace based on the testimonies of 1,000 witnesses.
In February 1983, the Fifth Brigade of the Zimbabwean army went to Neshango, a small village in the then rebellious southern province of Matebeleland and rounded up scores of villagers for interrogation. Among those rounded up were two young pregnant girls.
As if to confirm its notoriety, the Fifth Brigade - a North Korea-trained unit - soon got bored with merely interrogating its captives on the whereabouts of the armed rebels who were fighting President Robert Mugabe's government.
The soldiers picked out the two pregnant girls from the rest of the villagers and shot them at close range to death. That did not seem to meet their standards for bestial ruthlessness and - using bayonets fixed on their AK-47 rifles, the soldiers then slit open the dead girls' stomachs exposing their moving foetuses.
This is one of the gruesome incidents captured in the report compiled by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) in Zimbabwe and the Legal Resources Foundation (LRF) about massacres committed by the Fifth Brigade army unit in Matabeleland and part of the Midlands province in the early and mid-eighties. Based on the testimonies on over 1,000 people, the report says that between 5,000 and 7,000 Zimbabweans - unarmed civilians at that - were massacred those dark post-independence days between 1981 and 1988. <SNIP>
Not all w/ a background on the M-L left however, are apologists for Mugabe. Bill Fletcher, who has been in FRSO, was a co-author of the statement last yr. condemning the political repression, along w/ some in the BRC. http://www.africaaction.org/desk/pr0306a.htm
http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/1996/9612/news1/26.htm
"Deep intimacy." Heh, it better not be what I'm thinking. Mugabe 'sez homosexuality is white decadence.
ZIMBABWEAN PRESIDENT ON DEVELOPMENT OF RELATIONS WITH DPRK PYONGYANG, DECEMBER 26 (KCNA) -- ROBERT G. MUGABE, PRESIDENT OF ZIMBABWE, RECALLED THAT HE VISITED KOREA ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS AND FORMED DEEP INTIMACY WITH THE GREAT LEADER COMRADE KIM IL SUNG. HE ADDED THAT HE WILL ESTABLISH SUCH INTIMATE TERMS WITH THE GREAT LEADER COMRADE KIM JONG IL AND CONTINUE DEVELOPING THEM. HE MADE THE REMARKS WHEN HE RECEIVED CREDENTIALS FROM THE DPRK AMBASSADOR ON DECEMBER 20. HOPING THAT KOREA WILL BE REUNIFIED THE WAY DESIRED BY THE KOREAN PEOPLE, HE STRESSED THAT THE STAND OF KOREA IS ENTIRELY THE STAND OF ZIMBABWE. HE REFERRED TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF ECONOMIC COOPERATION BETWEEN ZIMBABWE AND KOREA.
-- Michael Pugliese