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 t's
not often that America's mainstream media is willing to talk about
the failure of government in sub-Saharan Africa.
But that was exactly the subject of a segment on 60 Minutes
which aired on January 21, 2001.
The rapidly deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe provided provocative
news filler. But while the report touched on the main points of
current events there, the producer failed to recognize that the
segment was really the portrait of a society ripe for genocide.
In his 1992 book Revolution and Genocide, Robert
Melson, a Professor of Political Science at Purdue University,
enumerated factors which scholars on the subject have identified
as predisposing a nation towards genocide: The presence of powerful,
ambitious leaders with no compunctions about murdering political
opponents is one of the requirements. These leaders cunningly exploit
internal strife and economic distress to their advantage. And they
employ the rhetoric of hatred and fear, and the scapegoating of
potential victims, in order to demonize a minority population so
that the minority appears to be evil and in league with outsiders,
intent on overthrowing the prevailing society.
All of this is in play in Zimbabwe, today.
The handwriting is on the wall everywhere, scrawled in such big
letters it's impossible to miss. That reality didn't escape one
unidentified farmer quoted in the April
18, 2000 London Telegraph: "I'm so sad that they have
to use us all as scapegoats. It's almost like the beginnings of
genocide."
Until 1980, Zimbabwe was the British colony called Rhodesia. Today,
black Africans comprise approximately 98% of its population. Less
than 1% — approximately 70,000 — are white. The remaining
population consists of Coloureds (people of mixed racial origins)
and Asians.
According to the 60 Minutes report:
There was a time when the country of Zimbabwe represented the hopes
and the aspirations of the entire African continent…it had
democratic institutions, and blacks and whites lived together in
relative prosperity…. With independence, [Robert Mugabe] preached
conciliation and convinced many whites to stay on and participate
in a new democracy. But this past year, things have gone terribly
wrong in Zimbabwe. For the first time, President Mugabe is facing
tough political opposition and he has reacted by declaring war on
the whites he once courted, and on thousands of blacks whose only
crime has been to support the political party challenging him. What
was once the most promising democracy in Africa is now on the verge
of economic collapse and political anarchy.
Mugabe has set about killing and terrorizing white landowners, and
promising their land to his supporters. In the process, he's provided
a glimpse into the horrific dangers of so-called "reasonable" gun
laws such as gun registration and gun owner licensing.
From its inception as an independent nation, Zimbabwe has been ruled
by only one man: Robert Mugabe, first as prime minister, and since
1987 as president. The country's last general election was held
in 1996, and Mugabe won his fourth term as president handily. No
one dared oppose him then; he had already "browbeaten, dismissed
and intimidated his rivals."
But there was trouble on the horizon. According
to the London Telegraph, by 1997, "Zimbabwe's economy
plunged into crisis, creating a need for a scapegoat."
That need intensified when, on February 15, 2000, Mugabe
was voted down, suffering a "crushing blow to his authority"
as a constitutional referendum — which would have strengthened
his power and allowed him to run the country for up to twelve more
years.
The defeat spurred calls
for Mugabe to step aside as leader of his ruling Zanu-PF party
(Zimbabwe African National Union — Patriotic Front), even prior
to the outcome of the country's upcoming general elections to be
held later that spring.
Despite a February 18, 2000 report
in the London Telegraph that "Mr. Mugabe's quest for
a scapegoat is expected to settle on his own MPs [Members of Parliament]",
Mugabe gave "his seal of approval" just two weeks later for government
confiscation of white-owned farms.
As the March 4 London Telegraph noted, "for the seven million
Zimbabweans who scratch a living in overcrowded
| “Here
in America, a large number of poll respondents who say
they favor gun prohibition are willing to accept its enforcement
through house-to-house searches. That would spell the
end of the Fourth Amendment.” |
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communal
areas, the prospect of resettlement on rich farming land is a powerful
incentive to vote for Mr. Mugabe." Kleptocracy — government
by thieves — has always been appealing to those who are promised
a share of the boodle.
One month later, Mugabe had the country's constitution amended
to allow him to confiscate
farms without compensation to their owners. And on June 27,
he emerged
victorious in Zimbabwe's general election.
Mugabe's war against Zimbabwe's white farmers, who employ about
330,000 black workers, escalated
rapidly. On March 29, 2000, he threatened
them with "very, very, very severe" violence. Then, on April
18, he branded
them "enemies of the state." Eight months later, he declared
that "an 'evil white alliance' was working to overthrow all
the black governments of southern Africa."
Mugabe's condemnation of Zimbabwe's white farmers as "enemies of
the state", and his linkage
of them to an alliance of British "forces of imperialism," is
strongly reminiscent of Nazi rhetoric which preceded the Holocaust,
describing a supposed conspiracy of Jews preparing to take over
the world.
Thumbing
his nose at a November 10 ruling by Zimbabwe's Supreme Court
that his "fast track land seizures" were illegal, Mugabe
defiantly declared that "nothing" would stand in the way of
his land theft, which he called a "noble effort to retrieve our
heritage" (just as Hitler claimed to be retrieving Aryan heritage
from corrupt outside influences).
According to the January
7, 2001 London Telegraph, more than 1,000 white-owned
farms have been "illegally occupied," to date, and "Mugabe has vested
all remaining hope of political recovery in the seizure of 12 million
acres of land from 4,000 beleaguered white farmers."
The parallel with Hitler's determination to let nothing stand in
the way of holding absolute power with promises about restoring
the glory of the Aryan people is unmistakable. It is of no small
significance that Mugabe's right-hand man, Chenjerai Hunzvi, goes
by the nickname of "Hitler." He dismisses
it as "just a name, like John."
But Hitler Hunzvi is the capable leader of a terrorist group called
the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans' Association (or simply
War Veterans). When asked on 60 Minutes if "He [Hunzvi] has
your support?" Mugabe replied, "Yes, of course." In answer to the
follow-up question, "Even though he likes to refer to himself as
'Hitler'?" Mugabe replied, "Of course. But what is in a name?"
In this case, apparently plenty. The Guardian
Unlimited labeled Hitler Hunzvi "the most feared man in
Zimbabwe and one of the most powerful." According to 60 Minutes,
Hitler has threatened that "anyone who resists the farm takeovers
will end up six feet under." When questioned as to why it was necessary
to beat up elderly couples on their farms, Hunzvi
replied: "This is a war. It's an economic war to transform the
means of production. Economic war is more bitter than political
war…. The Zimbabwean people are taking back their land….
There is no going back."
It is Hitler
Hunzvi's belief that Adolf Hitler's reputation has been tarnished
by "Western propaganda," and that it is Great Britain and its imperial
legacy — not the Third Reich — which are evil incarnate.
With the help of Hitler Hunzvi, Mugabe has set the stage for a continuing
campaign of murder and mayhem. His thugs have unleashed their terror
against the country's newspapers which dare criticize his regime,
and even conspired to have the editor of Zimbabwe's leading independent
newspaper, the Daily
News, killed. That attempt was
aborted at the last minute, when the assassin got "cold feet."
Mugabe has threatened to nationalize the country's mining industry,
stating:
"After land, now we must look at the mining sector…. At the
end of the day black people must be able to say 'Ah, the resources
are ours. Our people own the mines. Our people own the industry'."
Not that the mining resources would really belong to "black people."
They would belong to Mugabe himself, for all practical purposes.
And on January 22, 2001, the
London Telegraph reported that Zimbabwe's Supreme Court
Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay, who is white, had formally requested
government protection for the Court. Infuriated by its earlier ruling
declaring Mugabe's land grab unconstitutional, Hunzvi and his War
Veterans gave the five white Supreme Court justices an ultimatum:
resign, or face unspecified consequences. Gubbay's plea was ignored,
and the government responded by launching a new attack on the country's
white judges.
According
to R.J. Rummel, a University of Hawaii genocide scholar, "democracy
is a method of nonviolence…. The more democracy, the less genocide
and mass murder," because of the greater decentralization of power
that exists in a democratic society. But while Zimbabwe has been
characterized as a democracy, and indeed may once have been, clearly
that's no longer the case. Government power now resides squarely
in the hands of Robert Mugabe and his close-knit cabal of tribal
henchmen.
What most genocide scholars and 60 Minutes have failed to
appreciate, however, is the presence of the most important factor
for the accomplishment of genocide: victim disarmament. In the 20th
century, every government that has perpetrated genocide has disarmed
its victims first. This suggests that — although disarmament
does not cause genocide — disarmament is the sine qua non
of genocide. The history of eight genocides in the 20th century
committed against unarmed victims is laid out in terrifying detail
in Lethal
Laws, published by Jews for the Preservation of Firearms
Ownership. A
new article in the Arizona Journal of International and Comparative
Law, by Stephen Halbrook (a constitutional attorney with a 3-0
record before the U.S.Supreme Court), details how German firearm
laws disarmed the nation's Jews.
In Zimbabwe, the essential pre-condition for genocide was unintentionally
created by the British colonial government, through the 1957 Rhodesian
Firearms Act. That legislation, establishing nationwide firearm
registration, effectively closed what America's firearms prohibitionists
have dubbed the "gun-show loophole." In fact, the 1957 Act closed
every "loophole" for the lawful acquisition of firearms that lacked
a government paper trail, because all transactions must go through
a licensed dealer.
And the records of all transactions — i.e. the names of licensed
gun owners, and details of the firearms they own — go straight
to the office of the president, Robert Mugabe.
Of course, the Rhodesian colonial government didn't intend for its
1957 firearms registration law to facilitate genocide. Nor did the
legislators in Germany's Weimar Republic intend for their "moderate"
gun control laws to be used later by the Nazi government to disarm
all opponents of the dictatorship.
The lessons of Zimbabwe should serve as a graphic warning about
the dangers of excessive restrictions on civilian firearm ownership.
With few exceptions, guns now remain only in the hands of government
agents and common street criminals who seek to terrorize Zimbabwe's
disarmed citizenry.
As one Zimbabwean farmer who requested anonymity told us in a private
communication:
Police may inspect weapons and licenses any time. The big deterrent
to shooting anyone, even in self-defense, is that a murder charge
is automatic, and the onus is now on you to prove innocence or reduce
the charge…. And whatever, you are in the wrong. Better to
have a black security guard with a weapon. Ninety percent of black
Zimbabweans are good people and just want to get on and make a living.
The lunatic fringe of racist and get-rich-quickers are killing the
country, and only a mass political move by the silent majority will
set things right. That is what we have to hang in for.
While the country's besieged, essentially disarmed, and unorganized
white farmers are forced to wait their turn to become the next victims
of Mugabe's terror squads, the Financial
Gazette revealed that the government has been arming chosen
supporters, another element common to pre-genocidal societies:
Senior Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) officers have clandestinely
released firearms from the police armoury to independence war veterans…to
unleash violence and terror on white-owned commercial farms and
against members of the opposition."
On April 18, 2000, the London
Telegraph reported that "Zimbabwe's white farmers came under
renewed pressure yesterday as squads of up to 20 police searched
at least 200 properties for illegal weapons…. Chen Chimutengwende,
the Information Minister, confirmed that police had orders to scour
all 4,000 white-owned farms for unlicensed firearms [and] ammunition."
House-to-house searches by government agents with lists — as
were carried out by Adolf Hitler's thugs — is a common pre-genocidal
tactic. Said one farmer about such an incident on a nearby farm,
"Every single square inch of the farmhouse was searched. They even
looked under the knickers." The story noted that "the police retreated
looking 'disappointed' after failing to find any illegal weapons."
Here in America, a large number of poll respondents who say they
favor gun prohibition are willing to accept its enforcement through
house-to-house searches. That would spell the end of the Fourth
Amendment. Those who would cavalierly cast aside our Constitution's
protections of civil liberties can count on support from some in
the judiciary. Former D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Malcolm Wilkey
bemoaned the fact that the exclusionary rule, which bars courtroom
use of illegally seized evidence, "has made unenforceable the gun-control
laws we now have and will make ineffective any stricter controls
which may be devised." (Malcolm Wilkey, "Why Suppress Valid Evidence?"
Wall Street Journal, October 10, 1977). And Clinton White
House counsel Abner Mikva, a handgun-prohibition advocate, agrees
that the abolition of the exclusionary rule is the only way to enforce
gun control.
One wonders how many of those same poll respondents would enthusiastically
greet armed government agents knocking on their own doors, and ransacking
their homes looking for firearms. Or how many would nod with approval
as their neighbors' homes were ransacked.
Contained in the August 2, 2000 issue of the Journal of the American
Medical Association is an editorial entitled "Recognizing the
Public Health Impact of Genocide." Noting that "public health organizations
and human rights organizations need to discuss ways to identify
groups at risk for genocide and how to respond," the editorial concluded:
Genocide is the result of a complex combination of political, economic,
social, ethnic, religious, and historic factors. Such a combination
of factors requires an interdisciplinary approach to identify and
prevent genocide…. Whenever there is a threat or occurrence
of genocide, physicians and other health care professionals must
advocate strongly for immediate international action to prevent
morbidity and mortality among vulnerable groups. With little doubt,
rapid intervention in Rwanda could have saved tens — perhaps
hundreds — of thousands of lives. Such a public health and
human rights disaster must not be allowed to happen again.
Lofty words. But are we Americans truly serious about ending the
epidemic of genocide? Are we no longer willing to watch from the
sidelines as another century rolls by, and witness thousands or
millions more innocent victims killed by their own government?
If we really mean "never again," then the solution is rather obvious:
ensure that the potential victims of genocide are never disarmed.
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