« Fox News Porn | Main | The Good Life »

November 21, 2007

Zimbabwe Won't Miss Ian Smith

Ian Smith, former white prime minister of the racist government that ruled Rhodesia until the Africans took their country back in 1980 and renamed it Zimbabwe, has finally died. And if this moving editorial is any indication, he won't be missed, even by now-struggling Zimbabweans. The dramatic economic downturn being experienced under current-President Mugabe's rule, resulting in life expectancy of 37 and 7000% inflation, is still better for native Zimbabweans that life under white rule. Shocking, isn't it? Almost inconceivable - and yet, it is true.

I have often wondered how the condition in that beautiful country could deteriorate to such a degree without sparking major civil unrest. Perhaps the reason the country is not in a total uproar today is that the grinding poverty and hopelessness these people experienced under Smith and his predecessors conditioned them to accept much more hardship than we could tolerate.

I recall two incidents I witnessed on a trip to Bulawayo during my one-year stay in Zimbabwe in 1982 that demonstrated the ingrained racism that characterized white rule in Rhodesia. The first was when I boarded a bus driven by an African man and attempted to hand him my fare. He would not take it from me and asked me to set it down for him to pick up. The reason was that blacks were not allowed to touch whites. If by chance our hands had touched during the exchange of money, he could have been in serious trouble. The second incident was when I purchased a pair of shoes. The white clerk, who was quite pleasant and even deferential toward me, carefully boxed and wrapped my shoes for me. But the next customer in line was a black woman. Her shoes were unceremoniously dumped on the counter and the box kept by the clerk. The difference in the clerk's demeanor was shocking to me.

I am not one to wish death on others. But I can say that Ian Smith's death is, to me, a symbol of my undying hope for the ultimate death of cruelty and oppression as an aspect of human nature. And my heart goes out to all Zimbabweans, whom I know to be warm hearted and deserving of so much more.

Posted by Becky at November 21, 2007 10:55 AM