Stephen Gowans analyses media coverage of Robert Mugabe's legacy by exploring the West's reaction to him in the context of a hypothesis:
The more a country's leadership pursues national liberation goals, the more it will be 'demonized' by the West.
South Africa and Zimbabwe form a perfect comparison. Mugabe sought to make land reform 'meaningful' by returning ill-gotten colonial land gains back to Africans. South Africa did not go as far, and consequently its liberation leader, Nelson Mandela, is feted in the West.
Land reform is a serious issue in many African countries that suffered under direct colonialism. And Mugabe, at first, was reluctant to demand back what was owed. Initially, he negotiated a voluntary 'willing seller, willing buyer' process that was guaranteed to be slow. But the U.K. didn't hold up their end of the deal, and Tony Blair reneged on it. So Mugabe moved to retake the stolen land.
South Africa followed the voluntary model, and land reform indeed proceeded at a glacial pace. Behind today's colonial justification for not returning land to Africans is the racist idea that only white people know how to grow crops. White, Western-oriented firms ought to own all Zimbabwe's resources, from farmland to diamonds, if our media is to be believed. Democratization of African resources is a concept absolutely reviled in the West.
Gowans also discusses China's support for Zimbabwe, and the cruel Western program of sanctions against the country. They are basically the same as those applied against Maduro in Venezuela.
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Interview with Stephen Gowans
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