Mugabe: Pen NOT Mightier Than The Sword (er, Gun)

Africa, Elections, Morgan Tsvangirai, Rhodesia, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe

     Robert Mugabe’s understanding of an old adage part of the problem?

 Tonight BBC Radio broadcast Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe as saying “the ballpoint should not defeat the gun”. To my ears, this raises concerns about what is accepted as a systemic problem not only within Zimbabwe, but perhaps for many parts of my Africa. 

   Admittedly, many many of my older family member respects Mr. Mugabe as a man who made sacrifices and helped establish Zimbabwe. We are taught about Mr. Mugabe’s fight in Rhodesia and The Bush Wars, we are taught that Mr. Mugabe attained his law degrees while in prison, and we are taught about the Lancaster Agreement and our Independence Constitution in 1979.

 But I think Mr. Morgan Tsvangirai is showing himself as a new hero. From all the different angles that I try to sift through and all the different news stories I read and hear, I believe that Mr. Tsvangirai is preventing more violence and horror until things cool down enough so that we can have real elections.

 I ask again would you agree that Mr. Mugabe has had too much success with force? Does his comment reflect a kind of thinking that needs very quickly to be changed if we are to see true freedom and potential?

  editor’s note: edited for spelling and some grammar.

                                                ~  (name withheld by request)

admin @ June 23, 2008