Original:
Mugabe Was Hamstrung By A ‘Vicious System’ – Prof Moyo
Intellectual apologists are crucial for Statists to make their extortion appear acceptable to ordinary people. If politics really controlled the gun, we'd all have one.
Despite everything we're told we are all important political actors. If you don't believe me please try suggesting such gun ownership to a broader audience and gauge the reaction. Most people are conditioned to believe that mind controlled trained murderers are a better way to exercise judgment in conflict situations.
(Wikileaks trigger happy gunship)
When people like Prof. Moyo lament that the 'gun controls politics' in their State, they're lamenting that the reality isn't as well hidden as it is in other more 'civilized' States. The 'gun' has obviously controlled politics in Zimbabwe for as far back as you care to go. But it has everywhere else as well. Until all ordinary people are well armed it always will because 'democracy' involves using the gun, ultimately, to enforce one set of opinions onto a minority on any given issue.
Mugabe wasn't 'hamstrung' by this system, he embodied it. Over the course of his, long, life he presided over a system that gave him wealth and power that very few in the rest of the country could even dream of.
He successfully navigated the fine lines between giving the outward impression that politics was ruling the gun whilst, simultaneously, ensuring that the gun (his guns), was ruling politics; like all politicians.
This intellectual isn't being profound or insightful by making this observation of someone who's life is, I suggest, rightly harshly viewed, just because it is somewhat contrarian at this time. It is what you'd expect from the intellectual class and establishes his credentials for the next set of gangsters that will replace Mugabe.
After all, what kind of Statist doesn't want a generous interpretation of his 'legacy' to justify all the years of working the system to his own advantage?
Churchill could afford to admit it because he knew that no-one was really listening.
Who's to judge?