Mugabe's Ark.

In one of last week's stranger unnoticed stories, Zimbabwe is donating some exotic wildlife to North Korea. WTF, right? It's like sending your kids over to the local pedophile's house for a sleepover. Nothing good will come of it. It is almost kafkaesque in absurdity when one stops to consider it. What the hell does a autarkic communist relic need with some prize African game? It's always amusing to observe the bizarre shenanigans of the worlds petty dictators, but even this action defies logic.

Zimbabwe is the textbook basket-case. It desperately needs legit business partners and capital just to make it to next month. North Korea is the retarded belligerent state, that is actually irrational, destabilizing, and dangerous. Do they even know what an elephant or giraffe is in North Korea? How do these two actors benefit each other? It is no secret that Mugabe has used the North Koreans to train his infamous Fifth Brigade "death squads," which butchered the Matabele in the mid-1980s. However, trading exotic game for war crimes seems like an odd currency to balance the books with.

Assuming the animals survive the passage from Zimbabwe to North Korea, which is dubious on some levels, what next? North Korea is on the brink of famine, has no expertise in any kind of African animal care or husbandry, and, as mentioned above, is a regime that prides itself on being archaic, isolationist, out-of-touch, and strange. Let us not forget that Kim Jong Il, the leader of the North Korean Regime, has scored a 15 while playing 18 holes of golf and written several operas in his spare time. How long do these critters have?

Other than the profound weirdness, I  am not sure what the reaction should be, if any. Although, I am surprised that the animal rights wackos aren't shitting bricks and throwing an international hissy fit.

Postcard from Zimbawe: Meet the new boss, much worse than the old boss

The werewolf has been amused by the New York Times’s rather stark descent from grace, massive loss of credibility, and reliable display of liberal hypocrisy. Occasionally, he find himself glimpsing through the digital pages to see what’s up, but abandoned the New York Times long-ago for the more thorough and journalistically rigid pages found at the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and The Times of London. The print version of The New York Times could conceivably be useful should toilet paper run out.

That being said, the werewolf has a love-hate relationship with Nick Kristof, one of the liberal bloviators who regularly scribbles for the NY Times. The werewolf and Kristoff share a deep love and passion for Zimbabwe. That’s the only overlap on the Venn diagram of similar interests and beliefs on the world. Kristof has penned a honest and penetrating assessment of modern day Zimbabwe tilted “Postcard from Zimbabwe.” Here are some potent highlights that speak for themselves

"In a week of surreptitious reporting here (committing journalism can be a criminal offense in Zimbabwe), ordinary people said time and again that life had been better under the old, racist, white regime of what was then called Rhodesia.

“When the country changed from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, we were very excited,” one man, Kizita, told me in a village of mud-walled huts near this town in western Zimbabwe. “But we didn’t realize the ones we chased away were better and the ones we put in power would oppress us.


“It would have been better if whites had continued to rule because the money would have continued to come,” added a neighbor, a 58-year-old farmer named Isaac. “It was better under Rhodesia. Then we could get jobs. Things were cheaper in stores. Now we have no money, no food.”


Over and over, I cringed as I heard Africans wax nostalgic about a nasty, oppressive regime run by a tiny white elite. Black Zimbabweans responded that at least that regime was more competent than today’s nasty, oppressive regime run by the tiny black elite that surrounds Mr. Mugabe."

Western liberals have focused substantial energy on decrying and challenging the moral legitimacy of white minority rule. There was nothing wrong with per say. Challenging racism is noble, except that these liberals usually turned a blind-eye to the far greater cruelty and abuse that became the norm for so many post-colonial and majority-run African nations. Institutional race-based supremacy and legal segregation are ugly and unjust things that offend the werewolf to his very core. The werewolf is not endorsing the restoration of white minority regimes (although as noted by Kristof, those suffering would welcome their restoration). However, they pale in comparison to the genocide, ethnic cleansing, violent tribalism, and economic crimes committed throughout large swaths of post-colonial Africa. Kristof, is taking an important first step in acknowledging that dichotomy and one of the awful legacies of liberal racism and double-standards when it came to advocating for Africa. Good for him.

Zimbabwe: False optimism, abused paitence, and a bleak future.

Christine Nikol over at The Daily Caller, wrote an interesting article on select attitudes of Zimbabweans toward their current blighted circumstances. It is a thoughtful and well written article, complete with locations familiar to the werewolf. However, the article strikes the werewolf as being incredibly naive at points. The problems facing Zimbabwe mostly stem from the abusive nature of Robert Mugabe's regime and how bad governance has frayed any semblance of a civil society .

There seems to be misbegotten faith put in patience and timing as the eternal cure all. The werewolf's inner economist agrees that we are all dead in the long run, so in essence, patience can be seen as a cure all of sorts. Plus, life is full of transition points where a healthy dose of patience and optimism in a better tomorrow are essential.  Yes, when Mugabe and his dastardly ruling party formally crumble, a true road to recovery can begin for Zimbabwe. However, Mugabe's legacy includes years of a disciplined deconstruction of law and order, ethnic cleansing, economic mayhem, the standardization of torture, and institutionalization of fear. Patience, optimism, and wishful thinking aren't going to fix that mess.

Frenemies of the State.

The Atlantic's Joshua Hammer has an excellent article leveraging an insider's perspective on the farce of the ZANU-MDC coalition government in Zimbabwe. First, a hit-tip to Mr. Hammer for the clever "Mean Girls-esque" title, that is not only is a wonderful play on the modern vernacular, but down to its very core, an accurate vehicle that describes the internal dynamic in this uneasy coalition government, where the MDC is very clearly, the junior partner.

As a staunch advocate of the MDC, I thought it was a strategic mistake for them to agree to join ZANU in a "unity government." Mugabe is a gangster, kleptocrat, and butcher. The last twenty-nine years of his rule are a testament to that. He is also an incredibly gifted manipulator. Co-opting, discrediting, and absorbing legitimate opposition is his super-power. One only need look back to how Mugabe's Shona-based ZANU completely discredited and absorbed Joseph Nkomo's Ndebele-based ZAPU, following a series a massacres in Matabeleland with the intent of solidifying a one-party state. Mugabe succeeded.

It struck me as a huge blow to the moral credibility the MDC held as a legitimate opposition to Mugabe. I wasn't present from the diabolical levels of violence visited on MDC supporters by ZANU during the last few elections and can appreciate their collective fatigue. However, by venturing into a"unity government," the MDC exposed their Achilles heel, where entrenched ZANU apparatchiks can impede MDC progress and erode their credibility by shifting internal blame for the faults of governance away from ZANU and towards the MDC. A example of this is found in this paragraph:

"But Coltart has learned that fixing the system is not so easy when Mugabe—or Mugabe’s surrogates—are looking over his shoulder. The Education Ministry’s permanent secretary, a Mugabe loyalist who “views all the teachers as MDC sympathists,” Coltart says, has thrown up bureaucratic roadblocks such as mandatory police checks; as a result, only a few hundred teachers have been rehired. “It’s not a pleasant process, and if I wasn’t a determined, stubborn type of fellow, it would be harrowing,” he told me."

It is important to be mindful that ZANU retained control of all major portfolios involving the military, defense, and intelligence gathering, while the MDC was given control of secondary portfolios like health, education, etc. In essence, the MDC have set themselves up to wash away all of the traction they gained through extreme adversity and sacrifice during the last decade.

All things being equal, Mr. Coltart sounds like a righteous bad-ass and man whom all Zimbabweans should thank for his dedication and fortitude. Godspeed, sir!

Paradise lost. Was it ever found?

Although these tensions have been brewing for sometime, the fallout from Zimbabwe's disintegration under Mugabe is starting to take a visible toll on the internal workings of neighboring states in the region, especially South Africa. While South Africa's miraculous transition from Apartheid to majority-rule in 1994 is both commendable and impressive on multiple levels, the blind faith invested in the ruling ANC, and the rose-colored glasses frequently applied to the future of South African society in a democratic era have missed the mark, far and wide. The ANC's lack of resolve on isolating and undermining the Mugabe regime have sown the seeds for the aforementioned story, along with the chronic mismanagement of expectations of their internal constituencies. Africa and its few progress minded leaders need to embrace the fact the yesterday's "liberation" heroes have evolved into today's despots, mass-murders, villains, and are a tumor on tomorrow's aspirations.