Comparing the Bahamas and Zimbabwe

by Larry Smith

As a teenager back in 1965 I recall a solemn school assembly at which one of our teachers (who was from Rhodesia) tried to explain that African colony's unilateral declaration of independence from Britain.

Rhodesia was a prosperous colony run by a stubborn white settler named Ian Smith, who died last November. The country is now called Zimbabwe, and is run by the octogenarian Robert Mugabe, who was Smith's nemesis during the war against white rule in the 1970s.

In those days it was still big news for a colony to actually break from the British Empire unilaterally - the American War of Independence notwithstanding.That's one of the reasons we were sitting in the sunshine listening to Mr Dock on that cool November day 43 years ago.

Of course, the other big reason was race, which defined the context of the time.

This was only two years before the Progressive Liberal party's historic election victory that overturned white minority rule in the Bahamas. In fact, integration of the student body at my high school, Queen's College, had only recently begun.

Nineteen sixty five also marked the height of the US civil rights movement, when Martin Luther King's non-violent campaign began to be superseded by black power radicals like Malcolm X and Stokeley Carmichael. After King's assassination in 1968, the struggle became much more violent.

Meanwhile, in southern Africa, Ian Smith led a whites-only political party called the Rhodesian Front, which resisted all efforts to extend voting rights to the black majority. As he once famously declared: "I don't believe in black majority rule ever, not in a thousand years".

White rule in Rhodesia was based on property and education qualifications for voting that were in place when the British introduced self-government in 1923. Whites had 95 per cent of the votes in national elections although they were never more than 5 or 6 per cent of the population.

This closely resembled the situation in the Bahamas, where the 15 per cent white minority occupied most of the positions of power. The secret ballot was not introduced here until 1949 and plural voting with property qualifications, together with the disenfranchisement of women, continued until 1962. The effect of these measures was to diminish the electoral power of the majority.

In response, black power movements influenced by the highly publicised American civil rights struggle emerged in both the Bahamas and Rhodesia, where Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union became the dominant nationalist force.

Although most British colonies achieved independence in a relatively orderly fashion during this period, Rhodesia's defiance of the international community and denial of civil rights to most of its citizens led to UN sanctions and a bloody seven-year guerilla war waged by Mugabe and others.

Eventually, the British and Americans were able to negotiate an end to UDI in 1979, and the following year Mugabe became prime minister of an independent Zimbabwe.

Smith and his party continued to contest the 20 reserved white seats until 1987, when they were abolished. The former white ruling party was finally subsumed into a broad, non-ethnic opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change, which came close to winning the 2000 elections, prevented Mugabe from changing the constitution in his favour, and by most accounts has won the March 29 presidential and parliamentary elections.

In the Bahamas things went rather differently. The black-led PLP came to office in January 1967 by the slimmest of margins, but was re-elected in a landslide the following year. It has often been acknowledged that much of the PLP's inspiration came from the black power movement in the US and the victories achieved by black majorities in British colonies in the Caribbean and Africa.

But the white regime in the Bahamas had the common sense to do the right thing and avoid a racial war. According to historians Gail Saunders and Michael Craton, "That the transition (to majority rule) was a quiet revolution was owing to political moderation on both sides, with the economically aggressive Bay Street oligarchy resolutely retaining democratic principles, and their black opponents...equally firmly refraining from violence or even retribution."

The former white ruling group - the United Bahamian Party - was dissolved by Geoffrey Johnstone in 1970 and some of its members became part of the new Free National Movement along with a breakaway group of senior members of the PLP. Pindling and the PLP led the country to independence three years later and remained in power for a stultifying quarter century, finally succumbing to the FNM in 1992. Both parties have exchanged places twice in the ensuing 16 years.

Similarly, Mugabe is the hero of Zimbabwe's independence movement and the fight against white rule. But at 84 he refuses to countenance any challenge to his autocratic rule. His chief opponent is Morgan Tsvangirai, a trade unionist and human rights activist who has been arrested several times by the regime.

It is widely accepted that Mugabe and his cronies are chiefly responsible for an economic meltdown that has turned one of Africa's most prosperous countries into a country with one of the lowest life expectancies in the world. There is no freedom of speech or assembly in Zimbabwe, and the state has used violence to intimidate and murder its opponents.

According to David Coltart, MDC senator and human rights lawyer, "At the root of Zimbabwe's problems is a corrupt political elite that has, with considerable international support, behaved with utter impunity for some two decades. This elite is determined to hang on to power no matter what the consequences."

White rule is no longer an issue. But - like Pindling's PLP - the Mugabe government clings tightly to the rhetoric of the past. Zimbabwe's gross domestic product fell by about 43 per cent between 2000 and 2007, and millions of its citizens have fled the country in recent years.

Meanwhile, Mugabe continues to wield the same authoritarian powers once exercised by the white Rhodesian Front as the country descended into chaos under UDI. Ian Smith must be laughing in his grave.

Comments

[Sharon L. English]

My brother is married to a young lady from Zimbabwe and she is a lovely person. She told us about the horror she endured while living in Zimbabwe. They do not have any running water and out door toilets. In my opinion, Africa is one of the worlds richest nation and I do not understand why the people of this continent do not fight for their rights.

[Billl]

Larry,

I normally like your posts. But, this one is simply just too over the top. If not in fact a grossly unfair characterization, when quite truthfully, both said countries took two totally separate pathways to development after colonialism.

Also, the Zimbawe experiment, after brutal colonialism, is no laughing matter. Ian Smith, is probably burning in hell along with the other colonial thinkers of the day, who cut Africa up. Which has worked much in keeping the continent, in the continual state of confusion and chaos. All sides agree. In deep Africa and the Middle East.

While I got straight to the jist of your position- comparing Bahamas racist rhetoric, or, what can be assumed to be racist rhetoric, to now, compare that to Zimbawe and Mugabe's "failures". To be honest, I don't even see how you got to that conclusion.

Talk about a surprise ending! LOL...

Not to defend Mugabe. But, he was over zealous, at the very least, in regards to his Zimbawe-ization policies. The first PLP was no where near that type of economic strategy and in fact, many black Bahamians were very upset with the PLP for not doing enough in levelling the playing field for more blacks! And, when any political party in the Bahamas today, tries to distribute taxes to the poor and middle class blacks, people cry hand outs! Good grief!

Back to the rhetoric. As you can see quite plainly, in multicultural countries, even as metropolitan as the USA, race, is a HUGE issue- just look at the presidential race. It's just one of those things Larry.

However, to unfairly charecterize the PLP in regards to the economic failure in Zimbawe, to not realize the main point of your argument is set in play in the USA ---and also, if we would also look into the race baiting in Europe---for us to now say that we have a fair comparison on any level, or, in particular to rhetoric, or, to even allude to any of it, is totally FAR OUT LARRY...lol....if not way off base! People would and should take offence to that- here or there!

I thought more of your perspicacity Larry. But, you saying these things, makes you come accross as a profligate propagandist, in word and intent, in regards to such a clearly outlandish comparison, on such levels which are absolutely unfair- on all sides!

Shame on you Larry. Shame on you!
LOL...

Bill

[larry smith]

Bill, this article attempted to explore the background to the Zimbabwe situation by comparing it to the far more moderate Bahamian experience - in an effort to make foreign affairs more relevant to the local reader.

As I used to say in my radical days, 'it is too bad the PLP didn't lock up some of the UBP bigwigs because then we would have a precedent to do the same to the Pindling regime bigshots.'

Zimbabwe's present condition has nothing to do with Mugabe being overzealous, and everything to do with his personal megalomania.

Now Mugabe is in the same position that Smith was in under UDI - he is under fire for leading a corrupt and vicious authoritarian regime in defiance of international norms that brutalises its own people in the name of bullshit.

No wonder Smith is laughing.

[ebon]

Mugabe might have gone a little mad, megalomaniacal, whatever you wanna call it... but this was the type of man that it took to kick out those vicious racist apartheidists. Whats wrong with taking back land that the whites stole, or as we say, tief? And more importantly, why does the world care so much? Given that there's stuff going on in Sudan, Congo, Somalia, I could go on till the cows come home. Let me tell you why the world cares: because Mugabe gone and mess with the white man. So then Europe drop some serious sanctions on his backside, and then the Zim people starving... So is he megalomaniacal or just a stubborn revolutionary who can't bear to watch his revolution dissolve under the pressure from the very same colonialists who he booted out 30 years ago. No, no Larry, the Zim situation and the global situation is very much to do with the "rhetoric of the past". It is the same age old fight for hegemony, the paler inhabitants of the northern hemisphere have declared war on us people of colour in the south. Only solution is resistance

[larry smith]

This article does not discuss taking back white land because it is not relevant to the situation any more, except as a cover for Mugabe's megalomania.

And there is no argument from the great white north either - only a concern over how its done.

And who says the world doesn't care about Sudan? That's all we have heard about for years.

If you want to let Mugabe do what he wishes because he's black and at one point he was in the right, that's your problem.

Other people don't view the world through racial glasses 100% of the time.

[ebon]

its not about race, its about oppression. This is what created Mugabe. History defines the present and the present defines the future. Instead of focusing simply on his megalomania, you would be more circumspect to recognise that its not the man, its the oppressive global climate that sees people being exploited the same old ways, except now the colonialists have devised even more devious ways to get what they want. As long as its that way, we will always have egomanaical tyrants. Plus, Europe does not have the moral authority to chastise anyone.