Robert Mugabe vs. Ian Smith

[H. Ross Peron]

Results should be interesting to see

[freefair]

Ian "I was very wrong about Mandela, he's a great man" Smith

[Pheurton Skeurto]

Write-in: Ian Curtis

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Mugabe

[Arturo Belano]

Eww.

[morgieb]

From 2000 onwards - suicide.

Before then, Mugabe comfortably.

Mugabe

Snowstalker flip-flopping, lol.

[ElectionsGuy]

Ian "I was very wrong about Mandela, he's a great man" Smith

[Hifly]

Smith without a shadow of a doubt.

We should all be thankful that he didn't impose a South Africa style Apartheid system after Rhodesia declared her independence. It was a flourishing nation under his rule and anyone who believes that Mugabe has done a better job to help the nation thrive is delusional and/or ignorant.

[Dr. Cynic]

Both are gross.

[SPC]

The one who didn't steal my great-uncle's farmland.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

The one who didn't steal my great-uncle's farmland.

Surely you're intelligent enough to realize that your great-uncle's farmland was likely stolen from someone else?

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

The one who didn't steal my great-uncle's farmland.

Surely you're intelligent enough to realize that your great-uncle's farmland was likely stolen from someone else?

And Mugabe tracked down the person that lived there before and didn't just hand it over to some cronies??

I know some people who escaped Zimbabwe after the local ZANU-PF leader threatened to have their entire family gang raped when they took over their farm. Surely you do not support what Mugabe is doing?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The one who didn't steal my great-uncle's farmland.

Surely you're intelligent enough to realize that your great-uncle's farmland was likely stolen from someone else?

true of most people's farmland at some point in history.

[© tweed]

Mugabe is only portrayed as so evil in the West because of the land reform program.  he wasn't villainized before ~2000 despite "showing little respect for human rights and free elections", or however you'd dictate it to Freedom House.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Neither. White Minority rule was an abomination - I suspect that people here probably have no idea quite how small the white populations of these countries were/are, and what white minority rule meant in practice: it was all about the parasitic exploitation of the overwhelming majority for the benefit of a rather small minority. In this case we're talking around 5%. About the only posters from North America who have any chance of automatically understanding the implications of that are those from Quebec - and was, in any case, going to end sooner rather than later. Essentially the Rhodesian Whites overplayed their hand; contrast with Kenya.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I support land reform because I support agricultural  modernization and am opposed to colonialism, yes. Land reform actually increases agricultural yields along with giving impoverished laborers insurance in the form of secure assets. Redistributing land from racist imperialists isn't theft, it's justice.

Mugabe is an authoritarian monster but I'm not going to deplore an economically and ethically sound policy that is the bedrock of agrarian socialism.

[Indy Texas]

The one who didn't steal my great-uncle's farmland.

"...it should be noted that white people never amounted to more than 5.4% of the country's total population (that is, 270,000 white people divided by 5 million total population in 1970). Also, the white farming community never amounted to more than around 8% of the total white population and this proportion fell steadily after 1945 up to independence in 1980."

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The magnitude of land reform is always so misrepresented and misunderstood. I think conservative Americans are under some delusion that millions of white people were chased out of Zimbabwe at gunpoint.

So basically, we're talking about 4,000 households being affected by this in a country that had nearly 13 million people at the time this happened. That doesn't make it right, but I fail to see how it's any worse than getting your property seized via eminent domain, which happens in the United States all the time. I fail to see how it's worse than "land reform" in the Soviet Union in the 1930s or in China in the 1950s.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I fail to see how it's worse than "land reform" in the Soviet Union in the 1930s or in China in the 1950s.

Lowest bar ever?

[Indy Texas]

I fail to see how it's worse than "land reform" in the Soviet Union in the 1930s or in China in the 1950s.

Lowest bar ever?

My point is that not only were the overwhelming majority of Zimbabweans unaffected by it, the overwhelming majority of white Zimbabweans weren't affected by it either.

As to the original poll question, I vote Ian Smith because while I abhor his racial policies, he didn't turn his country's currency into the equivalent of packing material. Mugabe is a total screw-up as a leader, but the land reform is only a tangential issue in terms of how badly he has mismanaged his country and I don't think it's worth devoting the amount of attention to it that most people do.

[© tweed]

I fail to see how it's worse than "land reform" in the Soviet Union in the 1930s or in China in the 1950s.

Lowest bar ever?

run a gauntlet and you've gotta start somewhere.  don't rectify the problem and there is no problem to report, no problem you hear about.  unfortunately the souls involved won't consent to your rigmarole chess game.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I support land reform because I support agricultural  modernization and am opposed to colonialism, yes. Land reform actually increases agricultural yields along with giving impoverished laborers insurance in the form of secure assets. Redistributing land from racist imperialists isn't theft, it's justice.

Mugabe is an authoritarian monster but I'm not going to deplore an economically and ethically sound policy that is the bedrock of agrarian socialism.

That might be true about land reform done right. That is not the case with how Mugabe did it.

[Хahar 🤔]

The one who didn't steal my great-uncle's farmland.

That really explains quite a bit, doesn't it?

[Hifly]

I support land reform because I support agricultural  modernization and am opposed to colonialism, yes. Land reform actually increases agricultural yields along with giving impoverished laborers insurance in the form of secure assets. Redistributing land from racist imperialists isn't theft, it's justice.

Mugabe is an authoritarian monster but I'm not going to deplore an economically and ethically sound policy that is the bedrock of agrarian socialism.

To what extent has Zimbabwe's economy benefitted from these Land "Reforms"?
Also, are you too ignorant to understand that under Ian Smith the country was not a colonial state? Your post really says something about your education (or more specifically, the lack of it or how poor it was).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That might be true about land reform done right. That is not the case with how Mugabe did it.

Of course, but the principle of land reform in cases such as Zimbabwe must be defended. Of course what actually happened was a disaster - and the principle victims were not actually the white landowners. People here also need to grasp the sort of farm being discussed; the type that needs a large labouring workforce - but then that's partially because part of the point of Mugabe's land reform policies was not actually land reform at all. There was an understanding between Mugabe and the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s that land reform ought to be payed for, payed for not by the government of Zimbabwe, but by the British government and that it should be voluntary. The¹ idea was to protect - to an extent - the interests of white landowners,² and to satisfy the considerable grassroots demand for land reform at the same time. When Labour came to power in 1997 it decided to stop the payments.³ Mugabe was less than pleased by this.⁴ 'Land reform' thus became an (entirely ineffectual) way of getting back at 'the British' (Mugabe not quite grasping that the Blair government didn't give a fyck about white landowners in Africa or, indeed, in Britain), as well as A Cause in its own right (and a continued reward for loyal ZANU-PF/ZNLWVA troopers).

<sub>1. Incredibly stupid and shortsighted, not to mention inherently contradictory.

2. Who, remember, had just overplayed their hand in a big way, who had lost the political battle utterly, and who had no moral authority remaining whatsoever.

3. On the basis that the issue was an internal matter of Zimbabwe's and that it was no longer appropriate for Britain to act on behalf of the white landowners. The relevant quote is "we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe." The key phrase here is 'special responsibility'.

4. Incidentally, he publicly endorsed the Conservatives at the 2010 General Election. For some unfathomable reason they did not make much of this endorsement from a high profile foreign leader.</sub>

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Also, are you too ignorant to understand that under Ian Smith the country was not a colonial state?

That's true, the rebel regime was not internationally recognised (not even by its South African allies) and was therefore technically not a 'state'.