The Furrowed Brow.
The place for serious talk.
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The blog for the afternoon news and current affairs programme presented by Eddie Mair.
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Mugabe. Be a mug. Game ub?
My Monday efforts to rewrite an African disaster.
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Zimbabwe.
1) Should Tsvangirai have pulled out of the re-run? Doesn't he just look weak? Where is his moral authority now? What was all the suffering and death for, how is the martyrdom of the Zimbabwean people justified now? Would the dead have supported him at the cost of their lives if they'd known he would hand it over to Mugabe with five days to go?
2) What about the supineness of other sub-Saharan African leaders? Why haven't they damned the rape of Zimbabwe, the former bread-basket of the region, now more of a basket case? What is their vested interest in seeing Comrade Bob cling onto power? How can they tolerate this naked tribalism and corruption in thier midst? What does it speak to the world about the state of African politics?
3) Mugabe started out as the great hope of Africa in 1980. A new breed of African politician to rule for all in the common good. Where did it all go wrong and why?
WR.
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Ratty: Lots of questions, no ready answers, are there?
SO was asking me this morning (in a rhetorical kind of way!) why SA appeared to support Mugabe. How can we answer that, from our own perspective? The ex-colonial masters are the last people who should be involved, without a direct request from the peoples of Zimbabwe - unfortunately. But there it is.
But the evidence is stronger every day that other African nations are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the events in Zimbabwe. When they translate that discomfiture into action - pressure, or something more drastic - we may finally see some real movement to end the situation there.
It isn't looking good meanwhile, is it?
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Sis;
You said "...other African nations are becoming increasingly uncomfortable..."
They might have been whilst Bob was waging war on his opponents. But Tsvangirai has let him off the hook. He has removed the need for violence. If it declines then there is nothing for the other African leaders to be uncomfortable about, is there?
Tsvangirai's action in withdrawing has pulled the rug out from under his supporters and well-wishers, destroyed his future credibility, bolstered the position of Mugabe and relieved the pressure on other nations to act against this monstrous regime.
Who can support Tsvangirai in future? He's going to be labelled a 'bottler', who quits when the going gets too tough. The MDC now needs a new leader who will stick to his principles against a harsh regime, who will see the job through to the end, who is even willing to scrifice himself, if required, to demonstrate the idea that force and brutality must never be allowed to triumph against the established will of the people. Not a mouthpiece who talks a good game then leaves the field.
WR.
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I do agree with your sentiments, Ratty, though I doubt Bob's off the hook.
This won't do Morgan any good, it has to be said. Perhaps he wasn't the right man for the job, and perhaps it's better to find that out now rather than if he were in power. I don't know, it's just a musing.
I hope the UN might now play a role in pressurizing for further action, but it does need to come, in the first place, from neighbouring, or nearby, nations. Anything else will cause unrest of another kind.
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This is how I see it: if the election had gone ahead, and Mugabe had won (which I don't doubt he would have, by means of terror and deceit) his position would be considerably stronger than if Tsvangirai had stood. So I see Tsvangirai's withdrawal as a pragmatic move rather than weakness.
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The problem with any western governments getting involved is that it plays into Comrade Bob's hands, allowing him to denounce it as imperialism by stealth. He is still thought of by some as one of the great liberation leaders of the 70's, fighting against colonialism. Any chance he has to point the finger at the UK paints him in that liberation glow all over again, making it harder for other African leaders to speak out against him.
As regards the "election" (and I use the inverted commas there deliberately), I think that Morgan Tsvangirai was manouvred into a "damned if he does, damned if he doesn't" situation after the first round. If he failed to stand, then he gifted the election to Mugabe. If he stood and there was vote-rigging/violence/intimidation, etc, then the election result would still have gone against him, gifting the election to Mugabe again. Should he have not stood, allowing Comrade Bob to be elected un-opposed? I doubt that would've given the other African leaders cause for concern. Should he have stood his ground until friday's voting (an the following month that the count would'e taken)? That's a tougher one to answer.
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Mugabe--please accept the fact, you should go into retirement....
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I am still in a happy place.
At home, my religion, the religion I was brought up in, seems such a depressing affair.
I mean especially the buildings.
Or rather, what's inside them.
There there is death in the nave - the tombstones under foot.
There there is death in the walls of the aisles - the memorial tablets in white stone.
There there is death in the stained glass windows set high in the apse and again on the altar - Christ hanging, dying or dead.
There in the aisles are stone effigies of worthies and their spouses - both represented at a notional time when both had just... died, of course.
Here's death in the aisles,
Here's death in the knave,
We've made this 'House of God'
A cold and mournful grave. (MoreAnon, circa 2008)
That house of death has more dead in it than attend for the most popular of services.
It can be little consolation to the rest of the congregation that our God is clearly closer to the dead than the quick, in every representation of him there.
Here, there is no death in the Houses of God, only the most extraordinary beauty and light. The dead are in the grave yards outside the living space, or in mausoleums, with their earthly remains enjoying a little taste of heaven in Iznik tiles, a high dome of their own and pendentive arches.
In the living spaces, in the Houses of God, here,arches soar and play tricks that in our real world only seagulls and crows know of. As we stand beneath the mighty arches and turn and turn again, head uplifted in wonder, so the exquisite world above revolves and dances just as seagulls see sand, sea and cliff and crows the tops of tall trees.
This architectural tradition is pure delight. Think de Chirico not sombre, Escher in the material world, Art Nouveau decor pared to joyous essence.
Poor Palladio, having to put all he could gather from this tradition into private housing! The Church in Italy liked Il Redentore - no hint of Ottoman or Byzantium there.
The Villa Capra tries so hard, doesn't it!
All those English Palladian copyists, oh, so sombre or over-ornate compared with what inspired Palladio.
At Chiswick the chimneys are supposed to be a mystery. But then minarets ARE places of mystery.
It is marvellous to think of so many English families living generation after generation in their stately homes, rough hewn copies of Sinan mosques. Who knows, perhaps they will yet return to their proper purposes.
Here there is a Closure Motion. It's to ban the government party for Islamic activities. The Prime Minister is to be banned from politics for life if the Judges have their way. (Nothing like that could happen here, could it?) In the square above a funicular tunnel there was a marvellous demonstration on Saturday, by those supporting majority opinion.
This is a debate about public spaces. If your behaviour in public spaces upsets a majority (nudity, offensive language, drunkenness, singing in libraries, dancing on graves) then there in England you........well, ban it.
Here a government wishes to exercise it's right born of majority opinion to apply rules of the sort of that the Elizabethan Church Settlement applied to public social life. The rules it seeks are far milder than those that the church saw as necessary and is still praised for, by historians of that divided society.
Football has it's moments here. When we went one nil down, there was such a silence across the city I thought I would never hear a human voice again.
Somehow we equalised and then won on penalties.
I'm glad no Iman uttered an encouraging word from his lonely stone parapet during that sad silence. I fear his mosque would have had 7 million worshippers the next day. The match was on a Friday, thankfully between calls for prayer, though I doubt by footballer design.
Can you imagine football crowds without alcohol, a city centre without skyscrapers and without billboards advertising make up and Richard Gere?
And Houses of God to live for?
You don't have to imagine it. It's here.
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The last time a Labour Government had a large absolute majority and little popular support was in 1968 or thereabouts. Then, there was an American war (in Vietnam) that Harold Wilson's (the then PM) refused to condemn. He also refused to countenance further public ownership (the banks in particular). Meanwhile, his social policies were barely redistributive - compared with his inheritance from the MacMillan years. His Education Secretary (Shirley Williams) was busy setting up a first and second division Higher Education system and allowing the Art Schools (and Universities like Warwick) to become vassals of commercialism.
Sounds familiar?
Well, then, huge tranches of our radical young, including crucially, those first-generation graduates, beneficiaries of the '44 Education Act, decided they were revolutionaries.
In a nutshell, this group decision stripped the Labour Party of a significant part of it's future natural leadership, at a stroke.
Whether in Militant, SWP or Class War, those young people deprived themselves of the duty of leadership, by rejecting the practises of bourgeois democracy.
Their defeat, and the defeat of the revolutionary movements, if that is what they were - which I doubt, which had surely become completely clear by the end of the last Conservative government, had resulted in Thatcherism and Reaganism triumphing from California and east to Vladivostok.
The students at Nanterre did not lead the middle classes into factory work, nor did students, here, wearing Che berries and shouting 'Victory to the VietCong' endear themselves to voters here, nor lead them into guerrilla warfare in the Home Counties.
The cost of this desertion from dull social democracy by the young from working class, declasse, middle class and middle class marginal backgrounds is the privatised world we see around us almost everywhere in the West.
The Blairite 'rock 'n' roll' idol, nice boy, 'Hey, let's take the middle way!' (between Heathism and Thatcherism as it happened), ex-CND ('no American war too big or too small to support') hideous compromise was the ONLY way to stem the tide the defections to romanticism (and mysticism and hedonism and anarchy) had permitted.
The very individualistic nature of '68 dissent ensured that any opposition it (or rather it, a decade or two on) offered to Thatcherism would be so deeply confused as to be useless.
This time, the young appear to be migrating to Boris and David, not bothering to stop off at modern chic (and violent) radicalism. We have something to thank Bin Ladin for - i.e. being a Moslem. it's hard for the young to fanta/romanta/cise about being a Moslem without becoming one.
This time round to protect this Labour Government we have to start at the very beginning.
Equality, equality, equality!
In pay, in wealth, yes, but also in the recognition of equality in capacity or ability. (This last usually appeals to the adventurous middle class young. Anyone can exhibit the talents of a Boris or David, as every mockney knows).
If the revolution is to be delayed again and the bourgeois class to spawn another generation of work shy intellectuals, sobeit.
At least, this time the 'delay' will be strategic, rather than the result of a defeat.
Grit your teeth. Defending this government might mean, for example, encouraging bourgeois women to extract their 'fairshare' of surplus value in the work place.
It may be a price worth paying, especially in the case of middle class women who benefit who come from non - British sections of the international bourgeoisie. Rather as we accept over-compensation in income to some of the intergenerationally disadvantaged in industries like sport and entertainment, here too, important anti-racism lessons can be learnt.
Let Tories laugh and scorn what I say. That is where we have to begin, comrades, defending this pathetic government.
The exquisitely middle class Harriet Harman and her mockney husband are leading the (sadly, necessary) way.
Otherwise expect another decade of Thatcherism, when David gets into power, without a manifesto promise to his name. (Then, goodbye BBC, hello PBBC, the PrivatisedBBC, for example. All BBC personnel, beware. Being BBC staff gives you all sorts of rights. It is not BBC policy to abolish itself. Join the fight).
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Just kidding.
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I saved the life of a bumble bee today.
You serious types may think that's trivial.
But some of us think I just helped to saved the planet! (as well as Mr Drone)
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Fifi 12
The Dr said yesterday that they are returning to their own planet and who can blame them.
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9. Why isn't this post (and a clutch from me around the same dates) saved at my pmLeader site (arrived at by clicking on my name in blue on intro to this post)?
Anyone else having this prob?
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