Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe

Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe by Martin Merideth. (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2002.) Hardcover: 243 pages. Amazon Price: Available Used.

Book Review by Ryan Setliff

Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe chronicles the tyrannical rule of Robert Mugabe, from his heyday as a revolutionary guerilla who was captured an imprisoned to a victorious leader in what was initially to be a coalition government in the 1970's with Ian Smith's Rhodesian white colonials, the various black factions, and Mugabe's ZANU party in unity. Recently he said he could be a "black Hitler ten-fold" in a political speech. By the early 1980's, Mugabe eschewed the idea of a coalition government, opting instead for total consolidation of rule by his party. Mugabe through Machiavellian manipulations managed to scapegoat the political opposition in the public eye through deceptive propaganda. Thereafter, he justified bloody purges ostensibly for the purposes of stifling his contrived threat of a coup d'etat. Mugabe's violence obviously only served to swell political opposition—both white and black. Browbeaten white farmers gradually dropped the conciliatory posturing as their farms were confiscated and family members were murdered.

In his approach to counter-insurgency, Mugabe boldly proclaimed to his opposition, "We have to deal with this problem quite ruthlessly," with regards to resistance in Matebeland, so "Don't be surprised if your relatives get killed in the process..." Grim reports of Ian Smith's Rhodesian Apartheid regime knocking off black nationalist guerillas pail in comparison to the horrors unleashed by Mugabe. Millions have been killed as a result of Mugabe's rule, whether from state-instigated famine or from Mugabe's violent mobs.

Besides utilization of political violence, Mugabe, much like the warlords of Somalia, holds onto power precariously by controlling the distribution of foreign aid and humanitarian relief through his spoils system of patronage. In doing so, he buys support from a loyal cadre of cohorts. Robert Mugabe has secured his power base through a corrupt scheme of patronage to cronies while bribing armed cadres of murderous mobs to crush political opposition and dissidents.

Mugabe literally despises whites, but also shows his hatred for black minority opposition in his own nation. Espousing the familiar Afro-Marxist rhetoric of a demagogue dictator, he seemingly justifies any means requisite to purge his nation of the 'evil' vestiges of capitalism and colonialism. Mugabe rules with fanatical zeal and has morbid Stalinesque remarks in reference to his policies of forced famine and mass-murder, which are eerily reminiscent of Pol Pot. He offers no apologies for his cruel measures designed to solidify his rule. He has plundered the nation, stripped it of its productive capacity, and his made zealous efforts to confiscate and redistribute private farmland, which has utterly devastated the economy of Zimbabwe. He has reduced the productivity of a once largely self-sufficient agricultural breadbasket nation to a destitute backwater republic.

Recently, the fashionable thing amongst the media establishment and policymakers in the West-particularly Leftist cadres in the UK has been to tacitly support and praise Mugabe's efforts for land reform while conveniently ignoring the horrors of his regime perpetrated against both whites and blacks. The mass-media never does specials on ethnic cleansings in Zimbabwe. And unfortunately political correctness of leftist journalists in the West tends to extol leaders like Robert Mugabe (while ignoring his criminal track record as mass-murdering despot.)

The one smug thing I really dislike about liberal journalist Martin Merideth is his initial enthusiasm for the good intentions of Mugabe when he first came to power... He acts as if socialism and anti-colonial wars of national liberation are all noble and admirable, but Mugabe simply came along and betrayed the principle.

The communist bloc-the Soviets, Chinese, and North Koreans-launched anti-colonial propaganda campaign to fuel insurgent revolutions fusing nationalism with socialism in an effort to build a pro-communist, anti-Western bloc in the Third-World. Robert Mugabe and Nelson Mandela were among their minions. The red crown jewels in this endeavor included Ethiopia, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zaire.

The pictures documenting his torture and mass-murder perpetrated by these left-wing revolutionaries at various web sites are repugnant to the human eye and conscience. Yet those supposed self-appointed champions of human rights in the international community—the UN and IMF—continue to bolster his regime with aid.

Meanwhile, the Western media continues to turn a blind eye to the full extent of the atrocities when reporting anything on Zimbabwe. The politically-correct media routinely gloss over the crimes, and instead proclaim the need for the West to help arbitrate Mugabe's land reform proposals. Land reform in Neo-Marxist newspeak means confiscation and redistribution of private property.

Mugabe's legacy is one of criminal mass-murderer who destroyed his country's economy while murdering and starving 'his people.'

He is a murderous thug whose judgment may never come from some tribunal, but will when he meets his maker.

Many outside observers naively approach southern African politics and international relations with the idea that fighting is exclusively between blacks and whites—with later being culpable for sparking black rage. They ignore violence by black revolutionaries against their own blood kin, but why should it be any less acceptable when perpetrated against whites?

This book is more objective than another written by author Martin Merideth. Merideth has opted to extol Mandella as his biographer.

In South Africa, Nelson Mandella, the globe-trotting secular humanist and darling of the mass-media, was in reality a violent communist terrorist who deserved to be in prison. He doesn't get exposed as such by the Western media, but rather is heralded as a patron saint. The South African Communist Party to which he belonged used to engage in necklacing to strangle its rivals and taking individuals and placing tires around them to set ablaze.

There is a book by a black clergyman Sipo Mzimela tied to the ANC opposition, which documents the murderous ANC-perpetrated terrorism and corrupt assent of Mandella called Marching to Slavery, which may be found on a used book search since it is conveniently out-of-print. Despite exposing Mugabe, Martin Meredith cannot bring himself to trample the sacred cow of Mandella's fictious legacy as a humanitarian hero in his other book.