pgtips

As quoted by yourself "That was one of the one of the benefits of living on a smallholding ..... there's nobody around to ask questions "

I wonder how many perished at your wicked smallholding ? How much blood spilt by your satanic hands ?

How many African women raped there ?

How many mixed race African children you have hidden away ? or mixed race African children you can call brother or sister, the product of your fathers forcing themselves on African women.

Repent !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nobody should have to carry the guilt of these wicked deplorable deeds around with them.

Brav

Millions of people have been exploited, slaved, tortured, murdered and persecuted for thousands of years. Why on earth should any of us feel sorry for that? It still happens to this day and will happen for the rest of eternity.

I'm not saying it's right, but it's just reality. Move on

Mitzyboy

Woahhhhhhh ..... just hold on a minute
This is a discussion forum, not a confessional ....... cool it

pgtips

Move on ? Tell that to the millions of indeginous Africans brutalised by these evil regimes. Why is it no surprise that the wicked and children of the wicked will still try and defend their barbaric acts ?

Why did we bother fight Hitler ? Wickedness just happens so why bother ?

Mitzyboy

Well whilst you preach on, just to confirm the electoral board announced that Mugabe lost his majority

shiftdelete

O dear o dear...

pgtips, I will ask you one time for all to hear and see.
Do you renounce the disgusting Robert Mubabe regime and equally disgusting Chaka/ Lobengula etc regimes (never heard of them?)? you may extend this to any number of regimes starting with idi amin......but I understand that this could take a while...

This is your chance to unburden yourself with this shame you are carrying.

Finish the sentence off.

I pgtips am totally ashamed of the actions of my ancestors for the disgraceful behaviour and brutal barbaric nature in which they ruled Zimbabwe and South Africa. I would publicly like to ask for the forgiveness of the black Africans and the white africans which we made their live a living hell to feed our lust for greed and power irrespective of their tremendous suffering.
I bow my head in shame for all to see, that I have become a humble man who has learned the errors of his ways and now realise that all men are created equal under God regardless of their skin colour or tribal affiliation.

Signed.........

You do the rest pgtips?

shiftdelete

oh dear, please add to your shame the equally disgusting Mbeki regime who in their silence on (inter-alia) Aids, Zimbabwe and the killing fields of the murdered white farmers, have become shameful hypocrites.

You judge those who have built their country up, while you can only destroy everything you touch. You criticise the behaviour of others while you return to commit crimes far worse.

Shame on you- be judged and damned to hell!!!!!!!!

Mitzyboy

Next abusive post from whoever will result in a ban, sorry you should all know better

Daxk

can mine be blond, female and preferably pretty, I wont abuse her at all! Promise!!

Whats next??
Let me try a nostrilsdamus.
Bob retires to SA as a result of ill health.
SANDF moves some of its Peace keeping Force in to stabilise the inevitable round of attrition.
Mbeki, as retiring SA Pres, takes on a AU Role as administrator, the West chucks in Food and Aid, lots of advisors , lots of SA Autocrats ,lots of new appeals to give a pound a month to save one more starving waif, eventually a) a Federation or
B) More likely, another African despot emerges with full pockets.
End of days, Mbeki's dream of a Federation of United Confederated Kingdoms in Africa's Liberation League comes to fruition.

Stanley10

Going back to Tiger's original post, what does Morgan stand for and how will he turn Zimbabwe around?

The MDC website is full of warm fuzzy statements that they won't be like Bob, but how are they actually going to achieve their "agenda", or is it just a case of as long as it's not Bob it must be better?

Pablo

Once the car is wrecked, just changing the driver doesn't make much difference.

Pablo

And far from securing 'independence' for Zimbabwe, Mugabe has achieved the opposite. The first thing it will have to do is abandon its currency and use someone else's - probably the rand, within the Rand Monetary Area. So no more independence in that regard. There will be massive disruption, as there always is in such cases (but there is that already) and there will be reliance for the foreseeable future on handouts, doubtless comprised partly of my money. (Foreign aid: taking from the poor in rich countries, and giving to the rich in poor countries). The usual story. Yet another African 'welfare state'. Perhaps China would like it as a job lot?

TigerOC

Firstly I apologise for the very long post but feel it necessary because once again you are making judgements on and about people without first considering the circumstances and the environment at the time.

I lived through many of the events that happened and have studied the history of the era as laid down by the Examination Board (British) for GCE (now GCSE). i.e. text's approved by the British Government.

I ask you to respect me and not attack me as this is neither constructive or helpful. I will not debate the facts further as they are historical and can be studied at leisure and have no bearing on the current thread.

The British, with financial help from Rhodes, established the Rhodesia's under mining concessions in the 1890's. These were paid for by Rhodes. Southern Rhodesia is still consistently referred as a British Colony which is factually incorrect. Southern Rhodesia was in fact granted the status of a self governing territory in 1923 after the people of S. Rhodesia voted in a referendum not to join the Union of South Africa. In terms of this Britain was responsible only for foreign affairs and external defence.

World War 2 changed the dynamics of the World but there were other forces at work as well. WW2 crippled Britain financially. It could no longer support the Empire either financially and therefore militarily. It exited India in 1948. To add to the dynamics of the future America had made it very plain during the war in South East Asia that they would not prop up the Empire and were actually against the Imperial concept. Britain could not lose face and rather than admit that they were a broken force they came up with what we now call "spin". An exit strategy from the Colonies and in 1958 MacMillan made the "Winds of change" speech in Cape Town. Basically they were saying they were going to hand back the colonies to the indigenous people. To make this happen they had to wrap this in a nice package and justify their actions and this was in the form of universal franchise.

This policy was really formulated out of Kenya. Now Kenya set a number of bench marks for Africa. It is important to consider multiple aspects of politics at this point. Colonial life and behaviour was the norm at the time. This was the way the British did things. White people in Southern and Central Africa were raised on the "rules" of the Empire. When the Mau Mau rebellion happened it sent shock waves through Africa and Britain. Britain approached this in the only way they knew how. White, mainly British farmers, were attacked and killed in their homes and farms in the most brutal way and the British responded equally brutally. Many elite British units were dispatched to Kenya and many thousands of black Kenyans ( Mau Mau or not) were killed. In many of these raids British forces killed and then chopped off the right hand of the victims and brought them back in their rucksacks for finger printing and identification.

I remember as young child seeing a movie and newsreels of the brutal attacks by the Mau Mau as depicted by the British. Probably British propaganda. Can you imagine what impact this had on the people of our region? The very strong impression of a brutal savage revenge against the white man was painted very vividly in all our minds. This was followed shortly after by the massacre of several hundred white people in the Belgium Congo. Now this was very close. I remember seeing all these folk pouring through Bulawayo moving South with nothing except the clothes they stood up in.

There was nothing in these actions that could or would convince any of us that the Black population would consider anything but total retribution against us. There were other factors that did not help the situation at all. Many of the men folk were war veterans. They were trained soldiers and moreover they had come from 2 generations of serious conflict and to add to the mix we as their children had been brought up in the shadow of war and most of our games were war games.

So you have an explosive mixture of soldiers and their children brought up to believe in the might and justice of the British Empire on the one hand and the threat from the indigenous population that unless we handed over our control to them we would be murdered out of hand. This is the scene in the early '60's. There was no way that we were going to hand over control to people who were threatening to kill us. Neither were we going flee from homes, farms and businesses that had been built over the decades. The scene was set for confrontation. When the first unarmed farmers and their families were attacked and killed nothing but all out war could be contemplated.


You allege that we lived like kings to the detriment of the black people. We were middle class and working people much as the people of the UK are today. As a child I do not remember any really wealthy people. You must remember what I said above that Britain was broke following WW2. There was no aid and all services and provision for the poor was provided by the small white tax payer base in the country. There was no poverty in the African sense at the time. They lived as they had always lived in a traditional way. They were not starving and they had some of the best health care on the African continent and many statics such as infant mortality etc were comparable with European standards. The population growth as a result was phenomenal. In 1890 it was estimated as 500 000 and in 1980 it was 6.5 million. Black education was the best in Africa. By European standards housing etc was not great but we also did not have the resources available. This is about evolving economies. If you move towards massive urbanisation then you must have work to support the people that move in. Failure to provide both leads to dire consequences of crime. Look at the situation in South Africa currently to get an idea of what happens.

You quote the good old cliche of whites occupying 90% of the land. Absolute nonsense please back this up with verifiable fact. Here are the facts; the government allocated about a third of the country to the tribal trust lands (TTL) which were the ancestral homes of many of the tribes as was done in many British colonies such as America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand ..............The rest was state land that could be bought. The farmers bought the farms and developed them. The next accusation was the whites got the all the best land. False; black farmers were not agrarians they were herdsmen as their wealth lay in head of cattle. The growing of crops was "womens work" by convention and was and still is done on a subsistence level. Some white farmers were agrarian farmers and therefore knew how to get the best from the land by the proper use of fertiliser, crop rotation and GM crops. Interestingly those black farmers that were put into state sponsored commercial farming areas were some of the first farmers to be massacred by Mugabe's forces because they were not in line with communist ideologies of communal farms during the war.

This allegation I take very strong exception to and would like you to provide documentary evidence of such actions. If you are referring to the war era there were instances, as in any war, where civilians were killed and injured in cross-fire. There was never a single instance where black people were murdered indiscriminately which would constitute genocide. Within the military any action in which civilians were killed was investigated thoroughly by the officer-in-charge of the operation because we also had a "hearts and minds" programme running.

Am I proud of what I did there. Absolutely. My father and I were dedicated health professionals. He was also a trained military medic from the last war and often provided local black folk basic medical care out of his own pocket in his own time at home over the weekends. I worked in the Health Services and 95% of my time was directed at providing improved health services for the black communities. The whites could afford to pay for their services privately.

I do not know where you have got your information from but there was absolutely no comparison with South Africa. The political and government systems were radically different in both countries. We left before Mugabe and both my own black staff and those of my father were in tears at our leaving. My father had worked with some of his staff for 30 years.

Finally please evaluate history in context, based on the norms and politics of the time, and not what is the norm decades or even centuries later. Do you think that my father would have set foot in Rhodesia if he had been told what would happen 2 decades later? Most if not all of us, including Ian Smith, were ordinary folk, living our lives as best we could within the confines of the law and conventions of the time. How were we to know the conventions of the future? Please confine your vicious remarks to those backed up by verifiable and documented fact.

1066

Excellent summation again, TigerOC.

Unfortunately, there are those who will swear that black is white [oh dear, another racist reference ], and whatever you say will be taken as defensive propoganda.

Zimbabwe will take many years to even begin to approach the condition it was in pre-independence [financially and agriculturally], but I am sure that since the majority of the people have managed to survive Mugabe, so will they survive the rebuilding process.

It is virtually impossible for anybody who has not personally experienced Africa for a number of years to understand the structure of its society, and the nature of its peoples. It is little wonder that those of us who have get irate when we are told the exact opposite of the truth.

Oh, well .... c'est la vie!

pgtips

TigerOC,

I must say I am impressed with your response and thank you for explaining in such detail. Also pointing out the difference in the Zimbabwe and South Africa experience.

I must also commend you on the intelligent way you have expressed your viewpoint without resorting to insult. You are the kind of person Africa would welcome with open arms whether you were black or white and its a pity there are not much more like you.

I must say it was refreshing reading your reasoning and experiences and please note I am not out to offend anyone.

I just pray that one day the blacks and whites in Zimbabwe will learn how to live in peace and harmony and no one is judged by the colour of their skin, but the content of their character.