General Chat

Looks like Mugabe has gone then.

I think the big problem has been Grace Mugabe. Sally, his first wife, was an intellectual who kept him stable but, after she died and he married a typist forty years his junior, he started thinking in his trousers.

He has been a problem for 30 years! Glad to see him ride off into the distance even with his $billions which he siphoned off.

About B****y time. He should have gone years ago

Yep ditto

That is about as long as she has been leading him by it!

I think we have to remember where his regime came from and how far it has veered off course.

Politicians everywhere have an occupational hazard in that they believe they are indispensable. They also have a pathological unwillingness to admit to making a mistake, let alone to committing a crime.

Well. I listened to all the speech and all I got from the waffle was he would preside over the forthcoming Congress!

Watch this space. It is all going on yet.

I'm betting that Brexit will be settled first.

To think that the country used to be the Bread Basket of Africa. Now they can’t even feed their own people. Seized farms were either broken up & given to Freedom Fighters who didn’t have a clue on modern farming methods, or given to Party Cronies who didn’t even try.
All the people of Zimbabwe are getting, is more of the same.

The population of Africa is about 1.2 billion.
That of China is 1.3 billion.
And for Europe 0.8 bn

Africa has far more resources than either China or Europe and a great deal more habitable land as well.

Sadly all of the continent is run by venal corrupt people of which Zimbabwe is a bad example but by no means the worst (e.g. Central African Republic, Somalia, Ethiopia, Libya ).

There is little reason to expect the internal Zanu party dispute to produce anything better for the long suffering people of the country.

The acting president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, is likely to be confirmed in the job. There are good reasons why he is known as "The Crocodile" not the least being the massacres he carried out in Matabeleland. My cousin has a medium size business in the Cape. She says that any real change in Zimbabwe depends on South Africa but don't wait up late it most likely will never happen.

Some of my rellies were farmers nr Bulawayo others miners in the Zambia copper belt. The farmers were wiped out. I worked for Standard Chartered Bank in Harare (Salisbury) off and on while based in Singapore, setting up an online financial transaction system. Local politics, corruption and terrible infrastructure made life very difficult.

Doris Lessing wrote a trilogy about pre-independence Rhodesia with a female heroine ("The Four Gated City etc" ) . It greatly informs for the modern country too.

I know I am not as skilled with the use of Google as i might be but what relevance does the presence of yourself or location of any of your family have on the current situation with Robert Mugabe?

In 1980, he was hailed as a saviour. That opinion didn't last too long.

What help-up the people from castigating the fellow till now?

I think he was a bit of a saviour to Zimbabwe at the time and he had Sally Mugabe to support him but, with her death and the advent of Grace Mugabwe, he lost the plot somewhat.

The land should have been given back to the indigenous population, it should never have been taken in the first place, but they did need to have been able to farm it adequately before they took it over completely.

I am very interested to see when Nicholas van Hoogstraten gets a mention. He has multiple interests in Zimbabwe and I have always wondered if he had some kind of grandiose plan to actually buy the country.

I want to know why the Government was sending Zimbabwe millions - and whether they're going to continue to do so :-|

Because they will send anybody millions!

History occasionally demonstrates the electorate's euphoria when a undesirable government has been replaced by another less aggressive one.

It isn't too long until the excitement turns to unexpected upset just as soon as the new authority becomes less popular than the one replaced. :-S

Van Hoogstraten is a very unpleasant person though genial enough face to face. He lives on the coast in Sussex where he carries on a minor war blocking access to public rights of way.

This is what the Daily Mail has to say about him:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2379698/Mugabes-British-henchman-One-worst-slum-landlords--built-monstrous-mansion-Sussex-rival-murdered-Now-Mail-reveal-Nicholas-Van-Hoogstratens-astonishing-new-life.html

Yes, I know all this and it is why I suggested it would be a good idea to see what he got up to.