The South African government's powerful union ally COSATU launched a blistering attack on Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe yesterday, calling it a "derailed revolution" and comparing its tactics to Hitler's.
| The conmparison is usually overused. This is one of the few times it's apt... |
The hard-hitting comments, published in the weekly Mail & Guardian newspaper, follow Zimbabwe's deportation last month of 13 unionists from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) who had entered the country on a fact-finding mission. They signal a widening rift between South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) and its left-wing alliance partners over Pretoria's policy of "quiet diplomacy" towards Zimbabwe, accused by critics of widespread human rights abuses. "We will not keep mum when freedom does not lead to respect for workers and human rights," COSATU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said in a commentary provocatively headlined "We are not quiet diplomats".
| You kept quiet when they came for the white farmers, though, didn't you? |
"Liberation must mean a decent life for all, not a selected few." Mugabe and his ruling ZANU-PF, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, are accused by the West of rigging elections, muzzling the press and ruining the economy by seizing white-owned farms for distribution to landless blacks. "Recent events in Zimbabwe have opened up a debate in COSATU as to whether that country does not now represent a typical example of a derailed revolution," Vavi wrote.
| I dunno about a typical example of a derailed revolution. Seems the "revolution" is the problem. It's definitely the epitome of a failed state, though... |
He also said Zimbabwe Information Minister Jonathan Moyo who accused COSATU of working on behalf of the British had modelled his tactics on Hitler. "Hitler, the master propagandist from whom Moyo must certainly have learned his tricks, believed in repeating a lie frequently enough until it settles as the truth in the minds of ordinary people," Vavi wrote. The comments are sure to anger the ANC, which tolerates little dissent in its own ranks and insists that behind the scenes prodding is the only way to resolve Zimbabwe's political and economic quagmire.
| It's going to start working any time now... |
Critics contend the ANC's Zimbabwe strategy shows it cannot bring itself to criticise an ally from the black liberation struggles against colonialism and white rule. |