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

Robert Mugabe came to power in 1980 after a long civil war in Rhodesia. The white minority government had become an international outcast in refusing to give in to the inevitability of black majority rule. Finally the defiant white prime minister Ian Smith was forced to step down and Mugabe was elected president of a country now called Zimbabwe. Initially hopes were high that he had the intelligence, political savvy and idealistic vision to help repair the damage done by colonialism and the bitter civil war, and to lead his country's economic and social development. He was admired throughout the world as one of the leaders of the emerging nations and as a model for a good transition from colonial leadership. But month by month, year by year, Mugabe became increasingly autocratic; his methods increasingly violent. In recent years he has unleashed a reign of terror and corruption in his country. Like the Congo, Angola, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Liberia, Zimbabwe has been on a steady slide to disaster.

What happened in Zimbabwe? Now for the first time the whole story is told in detail by an expert. It is a riveting and tragic political story, a morality tale, and an essential text for understanding today's Africa.

Amazon.com Review
In 1980, Zimbabwe was the great hope of Africa, a place where blacks were supposed to realize their postcolonial destinies under the enlightened leadership of Robert Mugabe. But now the country formerly known as Rhodesia is an international basket case with a wrecked economy and a dim future. In this disturbing book by Martin Meredith, a British journalist with extensive experience in southern Africa, Mugabe transforms into a villain. "Year by year, he acquired ever greater power, ruling the country through a vast system of patronage, favoring loyal aides and cronies with government positions and contracts and ignoring the spreading blight of corruption," writes Meredith. "Power for Mugabe was not a means to an end, but the end itself." His reign has been so wretched, in fact, that some of the most sympathetic people in Our Votes, Our Guns are the white farmers who once supported apartheid-style rule but decided not to flee when Mugabe came to power. They were promised multiracial harmony; what they got instead was a racist dictator who thought nothing of using violence against them. Admirers of Philip Gourevitch--or, indeed, anyone with an interest in African politics--will appreciate Meredith's depressing but important story. --John Miller

---

All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Scholarly and well done, 2007-01-12
The book is incredibly well researched, yet manages to keep it all organized and interesting. If you want to learn more about Robert Mugabe and his rule over Zimbabwe, this is the book for you.


4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Zimbabwe: from liberation to kleptocracy., 2006-02-26
A nice book about the kleptacracy of present day Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe took a jewell of a country and turned it into a failed state. He has done this so he can enrich his family, friends, and supporters at the expense of the vast Zimbabwean people. Meredith describes the liberation of Rhodesia and the early promise of Mugabe's presidency. After the honeymoon, Mugabe gave jobs to his supporters and enriched his party, the ZANU-PF. Latest developments in Zimbabwe continue to show the mass exodus of the few remaining whites, and the poverty of the majority population. Mugabe enriches himself and his supporters, but leaves the rest of the population to fend for itself.

I couple of comments about what some of the other reviewers said. Zimbabwe is no longer a democracy. Hitler took Weimar Germany and made it into a Fascist state. Ferdinand Marcos took the Philippines and turned it into a tin horn dictatorship. Just because a country has some trappings of democracy, it is not a democracy. Remember the Soviet Union had elections, and they were not free. Zimbabwe may have elections and a somewhat free judiciary, but it is not a democracy any more than Rhodesia was a democracy. Mugabe is showing traits of a Fascist or Communist Dictator (i.e. hero worship of the leader). Mugabe is also showing signs of his racist nature. He often berates the former white leader Ian Smith, but Mugabe's leadership (or dictatorship) is worse. At least Smith gave up power, Mugabe wants to retain power forever.

Another comment made by another reviewer is that the West should not show debt forgiveness to certain Third World countries. I quite agree, why subsidize Zimbabwe so we can enrich the kleptocrats of the ZANU-PF and Mugabe's family. The West should have learned its leason with Mobutu and Zaire. Don't give Zimbabwe a dime until ZANU-PF and Mugabe are gone.

This is a good book from a great author. I am reading his latest work about the Fate of Africa, and this is a nice companion read.


6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

A well told tragedy that still continues, 2004-11-26
This book puts into context better than anything I have read the major tragedy that has been occurring in Zimbabwe for over twenty years. The parallels with the Congo (as covered in the excellent book "In the footsteps of Mr Kurtz" on Mobutu's kleptocracy in Zaire) are matched here by the story of how a wealthy and well developed colony after a crippling war of independence came under Mugabe's control.

The saddest aspect is while matters started very promisingly with the country ripe for a muti racial experiment and very similar to South Africa, the early use of force to remove tribal opposition was then applied unremmitingly to the white minority with fatal long term effects on the country's economy.

That inequality existed and changes were needed on land distribution were clear - the redistribution when it occurred was done in such a manner that not only were the whites permanently alienated but the corruption and lack of planning as to what was to replace has had fatal consequences with mass poverty, unrest and a wealthy autocratic elite destroying the future prospects for the poorer native populace of the country.

The control of every facet by Mugabe's Zanu Party whenever challenged has been met with violence from local opposition using North Korean trained cadres to outright intimidation of the judiciary, one of the real heroes in this story.

A very well told and researched history.




14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

Decline and Fall of Zimbabwe, 2004-01-12
This is a super-readable book about the career of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, whose corruption, brutality, and paranoia have wrecked Zimbabwe's democratic institutions and have brought the country to the brink of economic ruin. The book is refreshingly free of cant, and the author has a sharp eye for political grotesqueries, which have abounded in post-independence Zimbabwe. My only complaint (and hence the rating of 4 stars) is the lack of footnotes or any real analysis of the social or economic currents underlying Zimbabwean politics. Instead, journalist Meredith is content to chronicle events newspaper-style.


21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

Chronicling the Third World Tyranny of the Black Hitler, 2004-01-04
~Our Votes, Our Guns~ 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. Thereafter, he justified purges ostensibly for the purposes of stifling his contrived threat of a coup d'etat. Mugabe's violence obviously only served to foment political opposition-both white and black-and 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 guerillas pail in comparison to the horrors unleashed by Mugabe. Millions have been killed as a result of Mugabe's rule.

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. 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 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 nation to a destitute backwater republic. 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.

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, Zimbabwe, and Zaire. The pictures documenting his torture and mass-murder at various web sites are repugnant to the human eye and conscious. Yet those supposed champions of human rights, the UN and IMF, continue to bolster his regime with aid. Meanwhile, in the Western media turn a blind eye to the atrocities when reporting anything on Zimbabwe and only gloss over 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 between blacks and whites. They ignore abuses by black revolutionaries against their own blood kin, but why should it be any less acceptable when perpetrated against whites? Nelson Mandella, the media darling, was a violent communist terrorist, but doesn't get exposed by the Western media, but rather is heralded as a patron saint. 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.

Price is accurate as of the date/time indicated. Prices and product availability are subject to change. Any price displayed on the Amazon website at the time of purchase will govern the sale of this product.