News from Zimbabwe - 12/15/06

[amadeus]

Before the civil wars, Luanda (Angola) was better than Lourenço Marques (former name for Maputo, capital of Mozambique). Nowdays, Luanda is still in ruins and totally runned down.
Maputo is different.

I saw pictures of Loanda too, and it looked like the Portuguese worked really hard to turn it into a better place. (To those unfamiliar, Portugal's colonial policy during the 20th century was assimilation, genuinely trying to develop the colonies as a part of Portugal.)

... and I see that you are probably a South African who emigrated to USA, or very interrested in RSA as you know quite a lot on RSA life!! (you should open then a thread about RSA and the Soccer World Cup in 2010!! )

Nope, it's just a pet project of mine.

Visit to Ahmadinejad, President of Iran, 20 November 2006

Zimbabwe has no petrol!
Zimbabwe can not supply petrol to the petrol stations (queues of kms!! for getting 10l of p+etrol...)
Zimbabwe has no convertible currency
Zimbabwe had even not enough money in July 2006 for paying the making and transport of their new currency!!!!
BUT... Zimbabwe has friends who has got
- petrol
- money ($$$)
- loads of weapons (and Africa is always in need for getting more weapons fo feeding teh various conflicts!!)

A real petrol queue in Harare, 2002

That's how bad things were four years ago! At least then, you had the slight possibility of getting fuel.

Hummm.... question: what Zimbabwe offers in exchange?
It is open to your imagination, and you might be close from the truth imagining a bit of laundry, a bit of hidding, a bit of smugling, a bit of everything... and if you don't hear jprc in this forum again, it is because I had "an accident"...

Well, I sure hope you'll make it back, it's been nice to hear from someone actually on the ground there.

 

[Mulholland]

I'm sorry, I don't feel like whipping out the Stupid-to-English dictionary to figure out what you're trying to say. Could you please speak in English? This being an English language forum and all.

I'm going to have to agree with Sharpe on this one Parsi. Supporting a country simply because it's cheap, isn't being a very responsable world citizen. My girlfriend want's to book a trip to cuba for based on the fact that it's cheap. I refuse to go. I won't put money in the hands of a govenment that arrests Teachers, Journalists and librarians. I'll pay double and go to Cayman Islands instead. The same applies to Zimbabwe.

 

[amadeus]

Thank you!

An interesting side-story is that I was at the airport earlier in the year, and a guy was there with a hunting rifle; he was traveling to Zimbabwe for his vacation. At the same time that happened, Air Zimbabwe ran out of fuel and South African Airways went on strike again.

 

[The Last Conformist]

To those unfamiliar, Portugal's colonial policy during the 20th century was assimilation, genuinely trying to develop the colonies as a part of Portugal.

And I think we all know how well that went.

 

[amadeus]

And I think we all know how well that went.

You had two differnet factors that brought down those countries, the MPLA and FRELIMO and then the 1974 coup.

Before the Marxist takeovers of Angola and Mozambique, they were two of the richest countries in black Africa.

 

[Pasi Nurminen]

I'm going to have to agree with Sharpe on this one Parsi. Supporting a country simply because it's cheap, isn't being a very responsable world citizen. My girlfriend want's to book a trip to cuba for based on the fact that it's cheap. I refuse to go. I won't put money in the hands of a govenment that arrests Teachers, Journalists and librarians. I'll pay double and go to Cayman Islands instead. The same applies to Zimbabwe.

When the hell did I state that I "support" Zimbabwe, whatever the hell that means? It seems pretty obvious that I was insinuating something along the lines of "this is bad, but at least..."

And believe me, I'm pretty good at travelling while putting money in the right pockets. It's pretty obvious that you, on the other hand, don't travel much...

 

[Mulholland]

When the hell did I state that I "support" Zimbabwe, whatever the hell that means? It seems pretty obvious that I was insinuating something along the lines of "this is bad, but at least..."

And believe me, I'm pretty good at travelling while putting money in the right pockets. It's pretty obvious that you, on the other hand, don't travel much...

Sorry, Mr. worldly traveler, I repent for my transgressions, you are much wiser than me. I will now go blow all my hard earned money to backpack around the world.

'At least we'll have a cheap place to travel'. Sorry Parsi based on your past resoning in threads I really can't tell if you're sarchastic or not. But then again you seem to love communist countries and easily forgive them if they arrest a few dissidents here and there.

 

[Pasi Nurminen]

Sorry, Mr. worldly traveler, I repent for my transgressions, you are much wiser than me. I will now go blow all my hard earned money to backpack around the world.

'At least we'll have a cheap place to travel'. Sorry Parsi based on your past resoning in threads I really can't tell if you're sarchastic or not. But then again you seem to love communist countries and easily forgive them if they arrest a few dissidents here and there.

If you knew anything about travel, you'd know that as long as you have the right attitude (as I and most backpackers tend to), no amount of money lost is considered "blowing" it. If all you do is lay on the beach, smoking ganja, and shooting pool with other tourists then yeah you're probably wasting your time. But I don't do that.

 

[jameson]

Before the Marxist takeovers of Angola and Mozambique, they were two of the richest countries in black Africa.

Correction: they were the richest colonies in Africa. Neither UNITA or Renamo were responsible for achieving Angolan or Moçambiquan independence by themselves (in fact Renamo started a guerrilla war long after independence was achieved) . Their colonizer, Portugal, was an authoritarian dictatorship until 1974, shortly before independence. Frelimo and the MPLA did not come into power by coup but because they were the most important resistance movements. No matter how nasty their rule later became, I seriously doubt that these countries would have become happy and wealthy democracies if Portugal had held on a little longer.

Anyway, there was a time when I would have supported foreign intervention in Zimbabwe to remove Mugabe. The war in Iraq though disabused me of any notion that 'the West' could fruitfully intervene to install freedom and democracy any time we so pleased. It would probably be more helpful to try and put pressure on, or rather, create incentives for, South Africa to abandon support for Mugabe.